BERLIN, May 10 (Xinhua) -- German biotechnology company BioNTech SE said on Monday that it would establish its first hub in the Asia-Pacific region by establishing a regional headquarters in Singapore.
BioNTech also announced that it will build a fully integrated mRNA manufacturing facility in Singapore, supported by the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB). The facility would be operational in 2023, according to the company.
"Having multiple nodes in our production network is an important strategic step in building out our global footprint and capabilities," said Ugur Sahin, chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of BioNTech, in a statement.
The planned site would have highly automated and end-to-end mRNA production for the manufacture of the drug substance, drug product and fill-and-finish, according to BioNTech. The facility is estimated to produce several hundred million doses per year, depending on the particular vaccine.
"The investment will enable Singapore to develop capabilities in an important new therapeutic modality as part of the strategy to grow our biopharmaceutical industry," said Beh Swan Gin, chairman of the EDB.
BioNTech's unaudited 2021 first quarter (Q1) results published on Monday saw revenues skyrocket to around 2.05 billion euros (2.5 billion U.S. dollars) after less than 28 million euros in Q1 last year.
The increase in revenues was mainly due to the rapidly increasing supply of COVID-19 vaccine worldwide, BioNTech said. Estimated COVID-19 vaccine revenues to BioNTech upon delivery of currently signed supply contracts of around 1.8 billion doses were 12.4 billion euros.
As of May 6, more than 450 million doses of BNT162b2, the COVID-19 vaccine developed by BioNTech and U.S. company Pfizer, had been supplied to 91 countries or territories worldwide, according to the German company. Enditem