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Aspen Pharmacare Holdings, a branded pharmaceutical firm led by South African billionaire businessman Stephen Saad, has reached an agreement with Johnson & Johnson (J&J) to develop and distribute an Aspen-branded COVID-19 vaccine throughout Africa.
The vaccine, which will be marketed as Aspenovax by one of Aspen Pharmacare Holdings’ wholly-owned subsidiaries, Aspen SA Operations (Pty) Limited, will make the Saad-led company the first African pharma company to manufacture and commercialize COVID-19 vaccines in Africa.
The deal comprises the transfer of information and the rights to manufacture completed COVID-19 vaccine products from J&J-supplied drug ingredients, as well as the right to sell the finished form vaccine to African public-sector markets under the Aspen brand.
The arrangement comes nearly three months after the South African pharmaceutical company inked a non-binding agreement with J&J subsidiary enterprises as part of a strategic attempt to dominate the manufacturing and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines in Africa.
The latest deal with the U.S. pharmaceutical behemoth will see South Africa host the continent’s first significant independent manufacturing and distribution site for a worldwide vaccine against COVID-19 until Dec. 31, 2026.
Aspen created a strategic agreement with Siemens South Africa to promote the pharmaceutical industry’s competitiveness and improve the continent’s resistance to other illnesses and future pandemics in an effort to strengthen vaccine manufacturing capacity as it works to satisfy the rising vaccine demand in Africa.
In response to the announcement, shares in the major pharma firm closed at R183.26 ($12.2) on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, giving the drug company a R80.1-billion ($5.33 billion) valuation.
As the battle to be the first African business to manufacture a COVID-19 vaccine heats up, Patrick Soon-Shiong, a South African pharma mogul, announced the opening of a factory in South Africa that will produce up to 1 billion COVID-19 vaccinations annually by 2025.
The factory, which will be located in Cape Town, South Africa’s second-largest city, hopes to be the first on the continent to produce COVID-19 vaccines from start to finish. The plant’s commissioning will assist Africa in overcoming its present rank as the world’s least-vaccinated continent.
