The plans had already been leaked, but now it is certain: the pharmaceutical company is building a new insulin production facility on the Main for billions of euros. This means Frankfurt is beating Paris.
The multi-billion dollar investment plans of the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi in Frankfurt are official. The company is investing around 1.3 billion euros in the construction of a modern insulin production plant at its site in the Frankfurt district of Höchst by 2029. The IG BCE trade union welcomes this as an important decision in the fight against drug shortages in Germany.
Sanofi announced that several hundred skilled workers are expected to work in the new high-tech insulin plant by 2029. The new production facility, with an area of around 36,000 square meters – around five football fields – replaces an existing production facility. It meets the highest quality and automation standards, it said. Sanofi’s investment is made possible by the support of the federal government, the Hessian state government and the city of Frankfurt and is still subject to approval by the European Commission in the EU state aid procedure.
Traditional insulin production in Frankfurt
This project underlines the company’s commitment to diabetes patients worldwide and makes use of the many years of expertise at the Frankfurt BioCampus with its highly qualified employees, said Brendan O’Callaghan, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Sanofi Germany. The company did not want to disclose how much tax money will be used to build the facility. That depends on the Brussels state aid procedure.
A spokeswoman for the Hessian Ministry of Economic Affairs said the state and federal governments are currently examining funding options.
Sanofi’s plans were announced at the beginning of July, but confirmation was still pending. The Frankfurt-Höchst site is one of Sanofi’s largest plants, with around 6,600 employees. The traditional diabetes drug Lantus is produced there, with which Sanofi achieved global sales of 1.4 billion euros in 2023.
The Paris-based company employs more than 86,000 people worldwide. Sanofi was recently considering moving insulin production to France. These plans are now off the table.
Hesse’s Prime Minister Boris Rhein (CDU) and Economics Minister Kaweh Mansoori (SPD) welcomed Sanofi’s decision. It was “a strong signal for our pharmaceutical location and another milestone for our pharmaceutical sovereignty and export strength in Germany.”
Fighting drug shortages
Michael Vassiliadis, chairman of the pharmaceutical union IG BCE, said that with the investment, Sanofi was strengthening Germany as a pharmaceutical location and taking “the more than 100-year-old tradition of insulin production in Frankfurt Höchst to a new level.” In view of the “still dramatic supply bottlenecks and dependence on other countries in drug production,” the decision was necessary to guarantee the supply of insulin.
Sanofi’s investment in Frankfurt is also a positive signal in light of the debate about Germany’s ailing position as a location. Recently, several foreign pharmaceutical companies have promised to make large investments in this country: the US pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly is investing 2.3 billion euros in the construction of a production facility in Alzey in Rhineland-Palatinate. Daiichi-Sankyo from Japan and the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche have also announced billion-dollar investments in Germany.
Source: Stern
