Governments investing in new vaccine manufacturing plant in Toronto

A new influenza vaccine facility will be built in Toronto to help bolster Canada’s biomanufacturing capacity, the federal government has announced.

Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said the federal government will spend $415 million in partnership with Sanofi Pasteur Ltd. and the Ontario government to build the new facility by 2027.

“Ontario is investing $55 million through a performance-based loan, toward construction of Sanofi’s $925 million state-of-art vaccine facility to meet growing demand for flu vaccines, specifically for populations at greater risk of influenza,” Ontario Premier Ford’s office said in a March 31 news release. “The company is also committing to an average of $79 million a year in research and development in Ontario or more than a half a billion dollars over the life of the agreement.”

The federal government said the new facility will have the ability to produce enough vaccine doses to support the entire Canadian population within about six months of the World Health Organization identifying a pandemic flu strain.

The new facility’s work will include drug product formulation, fill-and-finish, and inspection of flu vaccines.

“This is a critical investment as it will create 300 high quality jobs and push Ontario toward becoming less reliant on others for the production of flu and potentially other vaccines,” said Premier Ford.

This new facility is a second large manufacturing mandate for Sanofi at this site. In 2018, Ontario and Sanofi announced another large bulk vaccine manufacturing facility focused on doubling the site’s capacity to produce childhood vaccines.