Moderna has announced an additional investment of more than 500 million euros in Spain. The plan is to build a laboratory for quality testing on the mRNA vaccines it produces in collaboration with Rovi at the Spanish pharmaceutical company’s plants in Granada and San Sebastián de los Reyes (Madrid).

It has only been four months since Moderna announced that its partnership with Rovi would be extended for a further ten years. Under the terms of this agreement, the Spanish company will manufacture mRNA medicines in Spain, expanding its existing capacity to produce new vaccines and therapies following the successful production of the Covid-19 vaccine.

Meeting at the Palacio de la Moncloa
The new announcement follows the meeting at the Palacio de la Moncloa on 14 June at which Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez met with Dan Staner, Moderna’s vice president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the company's vice president for production, Nicolas Chornet, and general manager for Spain and Portugal, Juan Carlos Gil Rubio.

Gil Rubio welcomed the announcement on his LinkedIn profile, “Spain is a key market in terms of access to talent, quality of infrastructure and innovation in the biotechnology industry. We at Moderna are therefore very proud to be able to strengthen our presence in Spain with a new investment of more than 500 million euros in 2022, which will among other things be destined to the construction of a new testing laboratory for mRNA vaccines.”

An enriching encounter
Gil Rubio was grateful to the Prime Minister and Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, for the Moncloa meeting, “It has been very worthwhile, and we hope to continue sharing projects that benefit Spain and society as a whole”.

According to the statement from the Moncloa, “Moderna has acknowledged the Government's support in making Spain a point of reference in terms of pharmaceutical innovation”. At the meeting, the Prime Minister himself underlined the support his cabinet has given to the pharmaceutical industry and RD&I in recent years. Measures include approval of the science law, doubling the Ministry of Science and Innovation’s budget  to over 3.8 billion euros between 2020 and 2022, and the launch of a cutting-edge strategic project for economic recovery and transformation (PERTE) in health, which aims to leverage 1.5 billion euros from both public and private investment.

^{Photo: Moderna}