In a joint press briefing today together with German Health Minister Jens Spahn, Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia, Armin Laschet, and Chief Executive Officer of CureVac N.V., Franz-Werner Haas, Member of the Board of Management, Bayer AG and President of the Bayer’s Pharmaceuticals Division, Stefan Oelrich, made the following statement:
"Following discussions with the German government it has become clear that current manufacturing capacities for vaccines need to be increased, particularly for potential variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
This includes the need to expand production capacity as well as related manufacturing expertise in Germany.
We at Bayer will contribute even further by making more vaccine available to help fight the pandemic.
Bayer is already supporting CureVac with the further development, supply and key territory operations of CureVac´s vaccine candidate through its expertise and established infrastructure in areas such as clinical operations, regulatory affairs, pharmacovigilance, medical information, supply chain management as well as support with country operations within the European Union and selected additional markets.
Although we have not previously produced vaccines, we hold strong expertise in the development of biotech products.
Since the announcement of our alliance between Bayer and CureVac earlier this year, we have diligently assessed our ability to further contribute with end-to-end manufacturing.
I am glad to report today that we have the necessary skills and capabilities at Bayer to manufacture CureVac's mRNA-based vaccine.
We are therefore planning to add an additional 160 million doses of CureVac’s vaccine in 2022 to further expand their supply network and overall capacity using the manufacturing network of Bayer. First commercial product from this expansion may already be available towards the end of this year.
To accomplish this, we will rely on our own product supply network including our site in Wuppertal, Germany."
About Bayer
Bayer is a global enterprise with core competencies in the life science fields of health care and nutrition. Its products and services are designed to benefit people by supporting efforts to overcome the major challenges presented by a growing and aging global population. At the same time, the Group aims to increase its earning power and create value through innovation and growth. Bayer is committed to the principles of sustainable development, and the Bayer brand stands for trust, reliability and quality throughout the world. In fiscal 2019, the Group employed around 104,000 people and had sales of 43.5 billion euros. Capital expenditures amounted to 2.9 billion euros, R&D expenses to 5.3 billion euros.