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 Under the deal announced on Monday - which boosted Rovi shares more
than 4% to a near-record high - Madrid-based Rovi will have the
capacity to supply active agents for up to 100 million vaccine doses
a year from its plant in the southern city of Granada via a new
production line.
The deal will, for at least a portion of the Moderna vaccine, spare
the challenges of a long, cross-Europe journey in which ingredients
had to be shipped hundreds of kilometres for final bottling from a
plant owned by drug company Lonza.
Lonza's Swiss output had so far been shipped either to Rovi for
"fill and finish" or to a facility belonging to Swedish-based
contract drug maker Recipharm in France. The finished vaccines will
be bound for Europe, Canada, South Korea, Japan and elsewhere
outside the United States.
"Our proven experience and capacities as a contract manufacturer of
injectables with high technological value has enabled us to
strengthen our present agreement with Moderna and this will help to
reinforce our manufacturing area, probably providing us with a
significant growth opportunity in this area," Rovi CEO Juan Lopez-Belmonte
Encina said in a statement.
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 The company did not disclose
the size of its investment in the new production
line. Lonza has said that each of its recently
built production lines cost around 70 million
Swiss francs ($76 million), with a staff of
about 60 to 70 employees dedicated to each line.
Rovi shares have jumped about 26% so far this
year, according to Refinitiv data. The stock was
up 3.8% at 47.9 euros by 1048 GMT, not far from
a record 48.4 euros set late last month.
 ($1 = 0.9238 Swiss francs)
(Reporting by Emma Pinedo and Inti Landauro in
Madrid, John Miller in Zurich, and Aida Pelaez-Fernandez
in Gdansk Editing by Ingrid Melander and David
Holmes)
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