Sanofi invests $600 million in Singapore plant

French pharma major Sanofi (Euronext: SAN) has added a new plant in Singapore to make vaccines and other medicines, as the company seeks to bolster preparedness for emergencies, including potential pandemics, according to Bloomberg and other media reports.

The facility, named Modulus, involved an investment of S$800 million (nearly $600 million) at Tuas Biomedical Park in the city-state. It can be adapted to manufacture up to four vaccines or biopharmaceuticals at the same time, and will be fully operational in mid-2026 and create 200 skilled jobs in Singapore.

The facility’s addition ties in with Singapore’s efforts to boost vaccine manufacturing capacity. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the island nation had signed advance-purchase agreements with multiple parties, made early down-payments for most promising vaccine candidates, including with Moderna (Nasdaq: MRNA), Pfizer (NYSE: PFE)-BioNTech (Nasdaq: BNTX), and Sinovac and had arranged with pharmaceutical firms to facilitate their clinical trials and drug development in Singapore.