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Friday, March 29, 2024

Glovax Biotech eyes foreign funders for vaccine facility in PH

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Glovax Biotech Corp. is exploring new sources of funding to finance the proposed P7.5-billion integrated vaccine manufacturing project facility in Batangas province.

Globax founder and chief executive Giovanni Alingog said the firm was actively pursuing talks with other potential foreign partners such as the United States Agency for International Development, Development Finance Corp., International Finance Corp. and IIX of Singapore.

The firm intends to team up with other international tech transfer partners and funders to construct the fully-integrated vaccine plant and supply the vaccines the Philippines imports.

The biotech firm presented a feasibility study to National Development Corp. general manager Antonio Mauricio in a meeting mid-November to highlight the required capitalization of about P7.5 billion.

Alingog said the firm was finalizing a memorandum of agreement between NDC and Glovax Lifescience Corp., a unit of Glovax Biotech, for future collaborations on vaccine manufacturing.

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Glovax is securing all the requirements needed to engage NDC to add fresh investments into the proposed vaccine manufacturing facility, before the year ends, he said. It plans to break ground for the facility in February 2023.

The proposed facility will be the first working vaccine plant that will allow the Philippines to catch up with its ASEAN neighbors and become an active participant in the ASEAN Vaccine Security and Self-Reliance program, which Glovax had been advocating for even before AVSSR was conceptualized.

Glovax reiterated its interest to participate in Vaccine Development and Security Project during the ASEAN Vaccine Development and Manufacturing Research Project Technical Regional Consultative Workshop held on Nov. 29 to 30 in Bali, Indonesia.

The VDSP will be possible through the creation of a local vaccine plant equipped with formulation and production facilities, Alingog said.

Glovax intends to take the development of the vaccine plant step by step starting with the investment coming from NDC to start its detailed engineering design. The plant will be built in Batangas.

It will be constructed in phases starting January 2023.

“This is the start of our capability buildup and eventually become self-reliant for our own sake. We must consider vaccine production as a national security issue on the wake of threats from diseases such as Tuberculosis, Rabies, Polio, Influenza, Pneumonia and Covid. These are some of the vaccines that Glovax will produce locally,” Alingog said.

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