Wockhardt, located in India, and a Serum Institute of India affiliate have agreed to develop a new fill-finish production facility in Wrexham, North Wales (PDF). Financial information, as well as data on the initiation of the project, the size of the facility, and the expected number of jobs created by the project, were not made public. Wockhardt predicts that the facility will produce 150 million doses of different vaccinations each year.
Wockhardt has positioned itself as one of the country’s largest drug suppliers, supplying medications to the National Health Service out of its present 612,000-square-foot production facility in Wrexham, which employs over 400 people. Diabetes, anticoagulation, pain management, and COVID-19 vaccines have all been manufactured at the location. In a statement, Natasha Poonawalla, chairman of Serum Life Sciences, stated that the partnership will be crucial in developing long-term capability in the U.K. as they seek to further improve supply resilience and assist in the global deployment of vaccines.
After reaching a contract with the British government in the summer of 2020 to execute fill-finish work on thousands of COVID-19 vaccine doses for exclusive use in the United Kingdom, including AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford’s shot, Wockhardt began ramping up its Wrexham plant. The UK government paid 65.5 million pounds for the Wockhardt COVID-19 agreement at the time before agreeing to further advance purchases from Pfizer, BioNTech, and other companies.
