The government has agreed to buy a manufacturing site in Essex, which was built to make fish medicine, so that it can be converted to produce a Covid-19 vaccine.
The £16m purchase will enable an existing facility, owned by the aquaculture firm Benchmark Holdings, which specialises in fish health and genetics, to be repurposed into a fully-licensed human vaccine manufacturing centre.
The cost to the taxpayer of buying and converting the Braintree plant will be £100m.
The site in Essex will be converted into the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult Manufacturing Innovation Centre. It is scheduled to open in December 2021.
In addition, the government has already invested £93m in a state-of-the-art manufacturing innovation centre near Oxford which will have capacity to produce millions of doses of a vaccine each month.
Construction has already begun in Oxfordshire on the Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre, which is due to be completed in 2021.
The two vaccine manufacturing sites will have the capacity to produce enough doses of a coronavirus vaccine for the entire UK population, when it becomes available, as well as vaccines which can treat other diseases.
The Braintree site was built in 2017 as a fish vaccine manufacturing site, however Benchmark Holdings decided it no longer required the plant because of a change in strategy, meaning it has never been used.
The company had wanted any purchaser to commit to retaining the 75 people already working at the site.
Peter George, chair of Benchmark Holdings, was inspired to contact the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, after seeing him mention the vaccines taskforce during a daily coronavirus press briefing in late May.
After obtaining Vallance’s email address, George said he received a response “within ten minutes”, putting him in touch with the government’s vaccines taskforce.
George describes the sale of the site to the government as a “triple win”.
He added that the firm sold its plant “at book value to the government, so we’re not making a profit, but the government is getting a good deal on equipment and facilities, and 80 people have got ongoing employment”.
Both plants will not be open until 2021, and the government has previously invested £38m to establish a rapid deployment facility, which will open later this summer.
Business secretary, Alok Sharma, said the government was taking all necessary steps to ensure it can provide enough doses for the public as soon as a successful Covid-19 vaccine becomes available.
“This new Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult Manufacturing Innovation Centre, alongside crucial investment in skills, will support our efforts to rapidly produce millions of doses of a coronavirus vaccine while ensuring the UK can respond quickly to potential future pandemics,” Sharma said.
