Australian company offers rival bid to produce mRNA vaccines...

Australian company offers rival bid to produce mRNA vaccines from 2023

A Melbourne company has told the federal government it could deliver 100 million mRNA vaccines from early 2023 by expanding an existing production line in a bid that rivals a plan from CSL.

Biotech company IDT has put forward a proposal to start production within 18 months and offer population-wide inoculation against COVID-19 and its variants in a project backed by scientists and industry.



mRNA vaccines could be produced in Melbourne within 18 months under a new proposal.

The proposal steps up competition with biotech giant CSL to build a domestic mRNA vaccine facility with federal support to develop new medical treatments and prepare for future waves of the coronavirus.

But the deal depends on whether Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Industry Minister Christian Porter can reach an agreement with vaccine producers such as Pfizer and Moderna to license their mRNA technology to an Australian partner.

The details of the bid, confirmed to The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, meet the government’s key objective of building domestic capacity to produce enough vaccines in a year to cover the entire population.

“We are quite confident that we can meet the population-scale requirement. Our bid includes a commitment to start delivering 100 million doses within 18 months,” IDT chief executive David Sparling said.

“We are working with a globally known equipment provider that has built these sorts of facilities in other parts of the world in the recent past.”

While the government has kept its plans confidential while it considers the competing bids, the details confirm earlier estimates that it is not possible for Australia to gain a domestic mRNA capacity any earlier than 2023.

CSL, which posted revenue of $12 billion last year, has proposed a facility near the University of Melbourne to start producing mRNA vaccines within 18 months, followed by an “industrial scale” facility near Tullamarine. This timeframe also depends on a government agreement with Moderna or Pfizer.

IDT, a listed company with $14 million in revenue last year, calls instead for a federal commitment to expand an existing production line already used to make pharmaceuticals and located near Monash University.