With the purchase of a plant in the Czech Republic, Novo Nordisk is saying “jak se máš” to hundreds of new employees—and expanding its production footprint along the way.
Vaccine maker Novavax is selling its 150,000-square-foot recombinant protein facility in Bohumil, Czech Republic, to Novo Nordisk for a total of $200 million, the Maryland-based firm said Wednesday.
Under the deal, which is expected to close by Dec. 30, Novo will get its hands on the production site, support buildings and the plant’s entire existing workforce, which a Novo Nordisk spokesperson told Fierce Pharma stands at around 300 people.
Novavax says the deal will help it focus on its early- and late-stage pipeline of protein-based vaccines leveraging the company’s bespoke Matrix-M adjuvant. The vaccine developer will receive $190 million from the sale in cash this year, with another $10 million to come in 2025, according to Novavax’s release.
Additionally, Novavax expects the facility divestment to slash annual operating costs by around $80 million.
"The decision to sell the Czech Republic manufacturing facility aligns with our previously announced commitment to evolve Novavax into a more lean and agile organization focused on partnering our pipeline assets and technology platform," Novavax’s CEO, John Jacobs, said in a statement.
The plant sale doesn’t come as a huge surprise. Back in August, when presenting second-quarter earnings, Novavax’s chief financial officer Jim Kelly indicated that the company was “actively exploring” whether to offload the Bohumil factory.
The site was originally purchased in May 2020 for $167 million as Novavax worked to scale up its manufacturing output during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company had originally hoped to produce more than 1 billion vaccine doses a year at the plant.
Nevertheless, Novavax was late to the party with its protein-based COVID shot, and the company’s vaccine, dubbed Nuvaxovid, has struggled to keep pace with mRNA offerings from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
The company, which last year hinted that it might not be able to stay afloat, was thrown a lifeline by Sanofi in May when the French vaccine juggernaut partnered with Novavax to co-commercialize Nuvaxovid and help develop combination shots.
Novavax received $500 million upfront as part of the accord and is in line to receive up to $700 million in potential development, regulatory and launch milestones, as well as tiered royalties.
Sanofi, which is slated to start booking sales for Nuvaxovid at the beginning of 2025, also took a 4.9% equity position in Novavax.
Novo Nordisk, for its part, has been on an expansion tear as the Danish drugmaker looks to scale up capacity for its GLP-1 bell cows Ozempic and Wegovy, which are approved to treat type 2 diabetes and obesity, respectively.
It’s not immediately clear what drugs Novo plans to produce at the Czech plant. However, the company’s spokesperson said the Bohumil facility will “provide mammalian production capacity for existing and future products.”
In a separate statement to Reuters, Novo explained that the production platform at the plant differs from that used to make its GLP-1s. Novo’s spokesperson confirmed with Fierce that the plant won’t make Ozempic or Wegovy.