Sanofi-Aventis Reveals Plans for Flu Plant in China

Sanofi-Aventis (SNY) revealed plans to spend 70 million euros ($103 million) to build a flu-vaccine factory in Shenzhen, located in the southern part of China. Construction will begin next year, with expectations that the plant will be operational in 2012. Initially, the facility will have the ability to product 25 million doses, all of them intended for the market in China, but the plant will have the potential to double that level of production over the next 10 to 15 years.

Although the facility will produce vaccine to ward off seasonal flu, it will have the capability to switch to pandemic strains, should the need arise.

Interestingly, Jacques Cholat, President of the Vaccine Division of Sanofi Pasteur, admitted the Sanofi vaccines would be more expensive than those produced by other China manufacturers, presumably domestic China companies. Cholat does not expect Sanofi to compete on price, but feels that the Sanofi name, together with the international standards to which the company adheres, would create sufficient appeal for the higher-price Sanofi vaccines.

The agreement to build the plant was signed in front of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the Mayor of Shenzhen, Xu Zongheng, as part of Sarkozy’s official visit to China.

Sanofi already has a filling and packing factory in Shenzhen, which partly explains why the new plant was located there. The new Shanzhen facility will employ about 100 people. Sanofi already has manufacturing facilities in Beijing and Hangzhou. The company employs more than 2,300 people in China.

Disclosure: none.