Sanofi: ‘Combining biopharma and vaccines ups manufacturing efficiency

Sanofi has combined manufacturing and supply chains across its pharma and vaccine in efforts to increase flexibility.

As of the start of the year, Sanofi has combined its pharmaceutical and vaccine businesses from both a financial reporting and operations standpoint into a Biopharma segment, the French Pharma Giant said on its end-of-year call. The segment will include specialty care, general medicine, and vaccines, but not Sanofi’s consumer healthcare business.

“Our pipeline being now mainly biologics, and [with] our new manufacturing facilities becoming fully versatile, we have decided to combine vaccines and pharma manufacturing operations,” CFO Jean-Baptiste de Chatillon told stakeholders. “This will trigger new efficiencies, eliminate duplications, and will increase flexibility.”

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The restructure comes a year after Sanofi consolidated its Sanofi Pasteur vaccines and its Sanofi Genzyme brands under the singular Sanofi name.

CEO Paul Hudson added more color to the newly combined segment, pointing to the firm’s multiple platforms that support both vaccine and biopharma programs.

“The work has been going on for some time in terms of converging platforms, shared services – could be engineering, could be many things,” he said. “And of course, the modular nature of the three cutting-edge facilities we’re building mean that we can move between antibodies and vaccines depending.”

Hudson did not specify the three facilities under construction, but projects underway at Sanofi include a €400 million ($476 million) modular and flexible vaccine plant in Singapore, a €600 million antigen and filling plant in Toronto, Canada,  and a €935 million ($1 billion) mRNA spending spree in its native France.

“It’s a sort of future stake. We’re getting organized now. We think it’s more appropriate to do that. And it will probably free up some synergies and opportunities for productivity gains,” he added. “It’s already enabled us to achieve some capital allocation improvements. So, it’s already paying dividends.”

The comments came a week after the firm announced plans to let go of all its employees at manufacturing facilities near Hyderbad, India, citing the need to adapt its working process to changes in the Indian and global healthcare environment.

For the full year, Sanofi reported sales of €30.7 billion in its pharma division – €16.5 billion specialty care, €14.2 general medicine – and €7.2 billion in its vaccines division.