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In the record-breaking time of 11 months, NNE, an engineering and consultancy company focused on Life Sciences, has built a new vaccine production facility for the biopharmaceutical company Bavarian Nordic A/S. The new facility, based in Kvistgaard, Denmark started production on 4 July 2005.
On-site construction of the 9,000 m2 state-of-the-art facility started on 1 August 2004 and was completed less than a year later when Bavarian Nordic accepted transfer of the facility and its related
systems and technologies from NNE.
The speed of the fast-track project has been essential to Bavarian Nordic, which is participating in the US Government’s programme to develop and acquire a safe smallpox vaccine based on the Modified
Vaccinia Ankara (MVA) virus.
“Thanks to NNE’s expedited project execution, Bavarian Nordic now has an operational vaccine facility that can produce 40 to 60 million doses of IMVAMUNE™ (the company’s MVA smallpox vaccine) per
year”, says Dr. René Djurup, Executive Vice President and Chief Technical Officer of Bavarian Nordic.
The new state-of-the-art smallpox vaccine production facility includes cleanrooms that are three times the size of industry standards and which also meet or exceed the US FDA and EU standards for compliance. Moreover, the flexible disposable production technology will enable Bavarian Nordic to adjust the facility quickly and smoothly to produce other vaccines if required.
With a construction time of 11 months from the start of Detail Design to the end of Operational Qualification, NNE has set a new industry standard for fast-track project execution. Normally, it takes
24 to 32 months to build a new vaccine production facility.
“We were able to build this facility faster because of an unusually close cooperation with the client, and a very strong project management team which was backed up by the broader high performance team that NNE had assigned to the project”, says Hans Ole Voigt, President of NNE.
He stresses that the new time record is the result of NNE’s dedication to reduce the execution time of fast-track projects. In 2001 NNE gave itself five years to fulfil the challenging task of becoming the first engineering company in the world capable of building pharmaceutical and biotechnological facilities in only 12 months.
“The goal has served a two-fold purpose. It has prompted us to innovate and develop new engineering methods and sharpen our competences. But most important it has given the pharmaceutical industry an invaluable strategic opportunity to drastically shorten the time to market”, states Hans Ole Voigt.
As a result, Bavarian Nordic is now the only company in the world that is able to commercially supply the growing demand for MVA-Based safe smallpox vaccines.
For further information please contact:
NNE
Hans Ole Voigt, President
Tel: +45 30797441
Jeppe Matzen, Communication Officer
Tel: +45 30750062
Bavarian Nordic
Elizabeth Dempsey Becker
Director, Public Affairs and Communications
Tel: +45 +45 33 26 83 83
About NNE:
NNE is a leading international supplier of facilities, consultancy and engineering services to the life science industry. NNE employs 1200 people and has local presence in Denmark, China, France, Sweden,
Switzerland and USA.
Website: www.nne.biz
About Bavarian Nordic:
Founded in 1994, Bavarian Nordic A/S is a leading international biopharmaceutical company developing, producing and marketing innovative vaccines to prevent and treat infectious diseases and cancer. With operations in Denmark, Germany, and the USA, Bavarian Nordic employs over 200 people and is listed on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange. Bavarian Nordic’s patented core technology, MVA-BN®, is one of the world’s safest, multivalent vaccine vectors for the development of vaccines against various infectious diseases such as smallpox, HIV/AIDS, as well as against breast, colon and prostate cancer.
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