The Moderna plant in Laval will be able to supply COVID-19 vaccines for the fall 2025 vaccination campaign.
“These messenger RNA vaccine production facilities should be able to provide vaccines to all Canadians during the fall of 2025,” Jerh Collins, Moderna’s chief operating and quality officer, said Friday. , during an official visit to mark the completion of construction work on the factory.
The Laval plant is expected to produce approximately 100 million doses of RNA vaccines annually.
In April 2022, the federal government entered into an agreement with Moderna to set up a factory in Quebec. The choice of Laval was revealed in August 2022 and work was launched in November 2022.
This is a $250 million project.
The factory will be able to do much more than produce vaccines against COVID-19, underlined the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, François-Philippe Champagne, at a press conference.
“Moderna is not just COVID-19. This is a range of vaccines that we will be able to produce at home. […] There are even vaccines potentially for cancer. »
The Minister of the Economy of Quebec, Pierre Fitzgibbon, emphasizes that the project makes it possible to reduce Canada’s dependence on vaccine production.
Mr. Fitzgibbon believes that Moderna’s new project will serve as a calling card to attract other projects in the pharmaceutical sector to Quebec.
“There are international pharmaceutical companies looking at what is happening, the talent there is at McGill, that there is at the University of Montreal, among others. […] I think it will create quite significant momentum for the life sciences. »