BioNTech is turning out the lights at the Singapore plant and planned regional headquarters it purchased from Novartis at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak, reflecting a sharp reversal in the mRNA specialist’s trajectory since the pandemic’s end.
On the heels of a comprehensive review, BioNTech has decided “to close its planned Singapore site by the end of February 2027,” the company confirmed to Fierce in a statement Thursday. The move comes as the German biotech continues to “align capacity with our clinical portfolio and long-term strategic direction.”
Several local publications first reported on the plant closure earlier Thursday.
BioNTech announced the purchase of the Singapore facility from Novartis in November 2022, the same year the company logged sales of 17.3 billion euros thanks to its massively successful Pfizer-partnered COVID shot Comirnaty.
More recently, the company reported sales of 2.9 billion euros ($3.3 billion) for all of 2025. That reversal in commercial COVID fortunes isn’t unique to BioNTech—its partner Pfizer and rival Moderna have also suffered the sting of dwindling vaccine sales in recent years.
“While we continue to invest in executing our vision, we remain committed to cost-effective value generation,” BioNTech continued in its statement.
“We actively manage our whole pipeline and assess all sites across BioNTech, according to key criteria: strategic alignment, operational efficiency, and sustainable value creation,” BioNTech explained. “We consequently plan to continue to significantly invest in essential areas while optimizing capacities in others.”
BioNTech’s transaction with Novartis came about 18 months after the company telegraphed plans to expand its mRNA footprint with a manufacturing facility buoyed by the Singapore Economic Development Board.
At the time, BioNTech said that, once operational by late 2023, the plant in Singapore’s Tuas Biomedical Park would boast the capacity to produce several hundred million mRNA vaccine doses each year.
BioNTech currently has around 85 employees at the Singapore site, according to the English-language Singapore daily The Straits Times. The company noted in its statement that it will offer severance packages and outplacement support to workers affected by the shuttering.
While BioNTech has continued to keep its nose to the R&D grindstone in spite of recent commercial declines, the company’s future looks a bit uncertain at the moment, after the announcement in March that the company’s CEO, Uğur Şahin, M.D., and his fellow co-founder and wife Özlem Türeci, M.D.—BioNTech’s chief medical officer—would depart by the end of the year to build a new company centered around “next generation mRNA innovations.”
Looking to evolve beyond its initial commercial roots in COVID, BioNTech has more recently touted its ambition to become a “fully integrated immunotherapy powerhouse,” with multiple late-stage oncology programs currently in the hopper.