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By Caroline Copley and Ludwig Burger
BERLIN/FRANKFURT, July 28 (Reuters) - A scramble to produce
COVID-19 vaccines is pushing up prices for some bottling
equipment and other raw materials, adding to industry concerns
about limited output, a German vaccine maker told Reuters.
Family-owned IDT Biologika produces viral vaccines for
pharmaceutical companies and is working on six COVID-19 projects
including AstraZeneca's experimental vaccine which has
been co-developed by Oxford University.
Based in Dessau-Rosslau in east Germany, IDT said it is
seeing bottlenecks for equipment like vials and had seen a few
cases of suppliers hiking prices.
"Our joint efforts to increase output volumes go hand in
hand with a need to have a responsible handling of prices to
keep production costs under control," Chief Science Officer
Andreas Neubert said in an interview.
"We have seen such examples (of price hikes) and those were
even quite considerable mark-ups," he added, declining to give
further details on which suppliers had increased prices.
The comments underscore growing concerns in the industry
about the hurdles of making, packaging and distributing billions
of doses all at once.
IDT, which has been in business for almost 100 years, has
applied to the German government for a 170 million euro ($199
million) grant to help it expand its development and testing and
production capacities.
IDT plans to build a new production line which will have
capacity to bottle an additional 380 million vaccine doses per
year, Neubert said.
Chief Executive Juergen Betzing said the company was only
able to fill a small part of the requests to fill vaccines as
they already had full order books. To take on additional
clients, they have to postpone other customers.
IDT is working with the German Centre for Infection Research
(DZIF) and partners in Munich, Marburg and Hamburg on its own
so-called viral vector vaccine and hopes to start early-stage
testing on some 100 people in Germany in September.
It aims to have capacity to produce up to 50 million doses
per year of the experimental vaccine which is based on the
Modified Vaccinia Ankara Virus developed for smallpox, Betzing
said.
Because the new vaccine is underpinned by proven technology,
it is likely to be safe and therefore potentially useful for
certain risk groups, such as elderly people, he added.
More than 150 vaccine candidates are in various stages of
development, with 23 prospects in human trials across the globe.
Moderna and Pfizer have launched two late-stage
studies that could clear the way for regulatory approval by the
end of the year.
($1 = 0.8525 euros)
(Reporting by Caroline Copley and Ludwig Burger; editing by
Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
