Boehringer Ingelheim announced July 10 an investment of more than €200 million in a new strategic production center for Veterinary Public Health in the Rhône-Alpes region of France.

With this investment, Boehringer Ingelheim’s Animal Health division will be able to respond to the growing global demand for foot and mouth disease (FMD) and bluetongue virus control, the company said.

“This is a record investment into our production network,” said Veronique Kodjo, head of global operations for Animal Health. “The new site is an important pillar of our future growth strategy.”

Boehringer Ingelheim is creating approximately 100 skilled jobs at the new site. The high-tech, 15,000 sq. m building will be located in the ZAC des Gaulnes (Gaulnes joint development zone) in Lyon, France. The foundation stone will be laid in the autumn of 2018, with the completed building expected to be operational at the end of 2021, according to the announcement.

“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 the 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, which are strategic vaccine reserves that can be quickly activated by governments in the event of an epizootic outbreak.

The process of formulating the antigens and filling vaccine bottles with them will be carried out in the neighboring site of Lyon Portes-des-Alpes (Saint-Priest).

The division also recently received a global investment of €135 million for construction of a new research and development center that will be inaugurated this fall and for construction of a new facility for formulating and filling avian vaccines that will be commissioned in the spring of 2020, the announcement said.

In addition, Boehringer Ingelheim announced earlier this year that it will establish a vaccine joint venture targeting FMD in China.

Family owned since it was established in 1885, Boehringer Ingelheim is one of the pharmaceutical industry’s top 20 companies. Some 50,000 employees create value through daily innovation for the three business areas: human pharmaceuticals, animal health and biopharmaceuticals. In 2017, Boehringer Ingelheim achieved net sales of nearly €18.1 billion.