BEIJING—With French President Nicolas Sarkozy watching on, sanofi-aventis announced an agreement with Chinese authorities to build a new vaccine manufacturing facility in Shenzen. The company's vaccine arm, sanofi pasteur, expects to start construction in 2008 and hopes to be producing seasonal influenza vaccines for the Chinese market by 2012. The new facility will significantly raise the company's already prodigious vaccine production capabilities, which manufactured 170 million doses of influenza vaccine in 2006 alone.

 

"China is joining a growing number of countries focusing on prevention of diseases and recognizing the value of vaccines," says sanofi-aventis CEO Gerard Le Fur. "The time is right for sanofi pasteur to further invest in China and prepare to provide this fast-growing market with the most modern vaccines to be produced in a state-of-the-industry facility."

 

The new facility will be designed to allow the company to quickly switch to production of pandemic influenza vaccine if a human pandemic is declared and once the WHO identifies the pandemic strain.