Boehringer Ingelheim Invests More Than $230 Million in Veterinary Public Health Production Center in Europe's “Vaccine Valley”

• New site will enable the company to respond to the growing global demand for foot-and-mouth disease and Bluetongue virus control
• It represents a record investment into the company’s production network for Animal Health

Boehringer Ingelheim  announced on 7/10/2018 an investment of more than $230 million into a new strategic production center for Veterinary Public Health. The company will establish the new site in the French Rhône-Alpes region, which is known as the European “vaccine valley”. With this investment, Boehringer Ingelheim’s Animal Health division will be able to respond to the growing global demand for foot-and-mouth disease and Bluetongue virus control.

“This project underpins Boehringer Ingelheim’s position as a scientific, industrial and commercial leader in global Veterinary Public Health – government coordinated programs for the control and eradication of epizootics in livestock”, said Jacques Bonin, Head of Global Veterinary Public Health Center at Boehringer Ingelheim. “We are the leading partner of governments and private customers in this sector and our goal is to support them even more in their fight against epizootics in the future.”

The commissioning of the new facility will notably enable Boehringer Ingelheim to establish antigen banks: strategic vaccine reserves that can be quickly activated by governments in the event of an epizootic.

The process of formulating the antigens and filling them into vaccines bottles will be carried out in the neighbouring site of Lyon Portes-des-Alpes (Saint-Priest). It has also recently received a global investment of €135 million for the construction of a new R&D centre, which will be inaugurated in autumn 2018, and for the construction of a new facility for the formulation and filling of avian vaccines, commissioned in spring 2020.