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Mexico City, Mexico - March 9, 2009
Sanofi-aventis invests €100 million in new facility in Mexico to produce seasonal and pandemic influenza vaccine
Agreement signed in Mexico City during French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s State Visit
Sanofi-aventis (EURONEXT: SAN and NYSE: SNY),
announced today the signing of an agreement with the Mexican authorities to build a €100 million
facility to manufacture influenza vaccine in Mexico.
The announcement was made during a ceremony attended by Felipe Calderon, President of Mexico,
and Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, who was in Mexico City for a State visit.
This facility will be built and operated by sanofi pasteur, the vaccines division of sanofi-aventis Group,
which was represented at the ceremony by Chris Viehbacher, Chief Executive Officer of sanofiaventis.
“By building this new facility, sanofi-aventis is proud to contribute to the strengthening of Mexico’s
health infrastructure and is eager to support Mexico’s exemplary commitment to public health through
influenza immunization and pandemic readiness”, said Chris Viehbacher. “This investment illustrates
sanofi-aventis’ local approach to global health. This facility will benefit public health in Mexico and the
Latin American region, in the context of influenza pandemic preparedness”.
The agreement was signed by Birmex’ (Laboratorio de Biológicos y Reactivos de México) and
sanofi-aventis’ representatives in the presence of Dr. José Ángel Córdova Villalobos, Minister
of Health of Mexico.
Under the terms of the agreement, sanofi pasteur will manufacture influenza vaccine in collaboration
with Birmex, a Mexican federal vaccine manufacturer. Birmex will perform certain stages of
manufacturing and will be responsible for distributing influenza vaccines to the public in Mexico.
Sanofi pasteur is planning to start construction of the new vaccine manufacturing facility within a few
weeks. Upon completion within four years, the facility will have a yearly capacity of up to 25 million
doses of seasonal influenza vaccine.
The new influenza vaccine plant will be built in Ocoyoacac, where sanofi-aventis already operates a
facility. The plant will be designed to switch to pandemic vaccine manufacturing if a human influenza
pandemic is declared and a pandemic influenza strain is identified by the World Health Organization
(WHO).
