The takeovers depend on Moderna reaching an agreement with the German government, which risks losing investment from drugmakers over planned healthcare reforms.
Moderna is interested in taking over German manufacturing plants that mRNA rival BioNTech is closing, CEO Stéphane Bancel told the newspaper Handelsblatt on Wednesday.
BioNTech unveiled sweeping cuts to its manufacturing network last month, outlining plans to close three sites in Germany and one plant in Singapore. The plan, which could affect 1,860 jobs, will see BioNTech shutter plants in Germany’s Idar-Oberstein, Marburg and Tübingen by the end of next year.
Moderna’s intervention could potentially prevent plants from closing. Taking over the facilities would be an interesting option for Moderna, provided the biotech can find the right partnership with the German government, Bancel said.
Bancel presented the acquisition of BioNTech sites as a potentially attractive alternative to building new plants in Germany. Moderna would take on BioNTech employees if it acquired and invested in the sites, he added.
Currently, Moderna operates manufacturing facilities in Massachusetts, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. All of the overseas plants are in countries where the government has made a multi-year commitment to buy mRNA products from Moderna. Bancel said that, as a European, he hopes at least one government will recognize the value of having mRNA production capabilities within its borders.
Government partnerships are central to Moderna’s near-term growth plans. The company put delivering sales growth at the top of its list of strategic priorities for 2026, and named long-term partnerships in the U.K., Canada and Australia as a key driver of increased revenue. International markets accounted for 80% of Moderna’s first-quarter revenues, driven by shipments for the U.K.’s COVID-19 booster campaign.
The biotech’s interest in adding capacity in Germany comes at a time when other biopharma companies are questioning the government’s support for the industry. Eli Lilly and Boehringer Ingelheim axed plans to invest about €2 billion ($2.3 billion) in Germany this month over planned healthcare reforms. Reuters later reported that the German government was dropping one contentious component of the reform.
Moderna has streamlined its manufacturing network in recent years, pulling back from capacity added and proposed when demand for its COVID-19 vaccines was booming. In 2023, the biotech ramped down its use of a Lonza mRNA drug substance plant in Switzerland and shifted production to internal facilities. More recently, Moderna paused plans to build a plant in Kenya in 2024 and stopped work on a Japanese facility in 2025.
