BioNTech is further expanding their Marburg site

After taking over the Marburg plant from Novartis with 300 employees in 2020 to expand its COVID-19 vaccine production capacities, BioNTech has grown steadily at their location in Central Hessen. The company already hired 200 additional employees until the end of 2021. For this year, BioNTech is planning to boost staff at its largest vaccine production site by 50% which will result in 250 additional jobs. 50 million Euros are planned to be invested to secure further growth.

Earlier this year, BioNTech presented their first modular mRNA manufacturing facility to promote scalable vaccine production in Africa.

The so called “BioNTainer” will be equipped to manufacture a range of mRNA-based vaccines targeted to the needs of the African Union (AU) member states. For instance, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and BioNTech’s investigational malaria and tuberculosis vaccines, can be produced with those units. The BioNTainers will be manufactured at the company´s factory in Marburg and are planned to be shipped to Rwanda, Senegal, and South Africa.

The first module is expected to arrive on the African continent in the second half of 2022.The manufacturing process will start running approximately 12 months after reaching its final location.