The action affects BioNTech sites in Germany and Singapore, where the company expects to have excess capacity.
BioNTech has outlined plans to close multiple manufacturing facilities by the end of next year, affecting about 1,860 jobs.
The German biotech intends to shutter three facilities in its home country. BioNTech’s Idar-Oberstein, Marburg and Tübingen sites are scheduled for closure by the end of next year. As previously disclosed, the biotech is also exiting a manufacturing facility in Singapore. BioNTech expects to conclude operations at the Singapore facility by the first quarter of next year.
Efforts to consolidate the manufacturing network are focused on sites where capacity will become idle or underused within 24 months, BioNTech CFO Ramón Zapata said on the company’s first-quarter earnings call Tuesday. BioNTech is exploring divestment options, including partial and total sales of the plants.
Savings from the actions will ramp up to a potential €500 million ($585 million) a year in 2029, the company forecasted. This estimate does not reflect the costs of outsourcing manufacturing, moving production to other BioNTech facilities or exiting the sites.
BioNTech’s Marburg facility houses eight production suites for large and small molecules. The plant can manufacture enough mRNA for up to three billion vaccines annually, according to BioNTech, making it one of the largest sites of its kind globally. Pfizer will fully handle production of its BioNTech-partnered COVID-19 vaccine from the end of this year, Zapata said. BioNTech employs about 450 people at the plant.
The Idar-Oberstein facility predates the founding of BioNTech. Now operating as BioNTech IMFS, the site was founded in 1997 and became a wholly owned subsidiary of BioNTech in 2009. BioNTech employs about 500 people at the site, which manufactures cell therapy products and clinical bulk mRNA.
BioNTech acquired the Tübingen plant as part of its takeover of fellow German mRNA biotech CureVac. The biotech added the Singapore site to its manufacturing network in 2022, when it acquired the facility from Novartis. BioNTech envisioned the Singapore plant making hundreds of millions of mRNA vaccines a year.
However, as demand for COVID-19 vaccines fell, BioNTech’s focus expanded beyond mRNA. Today, the biotech’s leading programs include the anti-CTLA-4 antibody gotistobart, HER2-directed antibody-drug conjugate BNT323 and PD-L1xVEGF-A bispecific BNT327. BioNTech plans to use the money saved by closing manufacturing plants to advance its oncology pipeline toward commercialization.
The biotech reaffirmed its forecast that sales will fall to €2 billion to €2.3 billion this year, down from €2.9 billion in 2025. The forecast reflects the expectation that COVID-19 vaccine sales will fall in Europe and the U.S. this year.
