The Franco-Austrian vaccine maker Valneva claims it is in “advanced talks” with Scottish Enterprise about multi-million pound public funding. Valneva wants to bring a Covid-19 dead vaccine to the market soon. The subsidy would enable the completion of the strategic production facility in Livingston, Scotland, said the listed company in a broadcast on Thursday evening.

At the beginning of December, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced an accelerated examination of the approval of Valneva’s dead corona vaccine. After the failure of the supply agreement with Great Britain, the vaccine manufacturer had pre-purchase agreements with the EU for up to 60 million doses and a smaller amount with Bahrain. As already announced, the company expects vaccine approval in the first quarter of 2022.

Following the termination of the supply agreement with the UK government for Valneva’s inactivated Covid-19 vaccine candidate VLA2001, the company paused plans for the Scotland site. Since then, “an extremely constructive dialogue” has been held with the public funding agency Scottish Enterprise in order to use the funding to develop the Livingston site into an important production facility for vaccines in the long term, according to the pharmaceutical company. (APA / red)