June 23, 2022: -U.S. biotech company Moderna will build a recent research and manufacturing center in Britain to develop vaccines against recent COVID-19 variants and other respiratory illnesses and help improve readiness for future pandemics.

The facility expects to start producing in 2025, and Britain has committed to buy Moderna’s vaccines for the future decade under the agreement.

Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines, using messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, were from those deployed in Britain to tackle the crisis and make Prime Minister Boris Johnson begin the economy from stringent lockdowns.

Moderna Chief Executive Stephane Bancel says the priority was to develop a shot combining refreshed growth against COVID, flu, and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV).

“By building a plant in the U.K., we are also providing the U.K. Government, which has a long-term partnership with us, with this agreement with the ability to be pandemic ready,” Bancel told Reuters in an interview.

“That capacity we’re building in the U.K., that they are committed to buying the product for the following ten years can be reallocated very quickly to anything they want.”

Britain’s health ministry said that the pandemic is showing mRNA technology to be one of the fastest routes to develop recent vaccines and could be applied to other areas, like cancer, flu, dementia, and heart disease.

“Our investment will ensure jabs in arms against some of the toughest viruses out there, which brings us to the forefront of the fight against future threats,” PM Johnson said.

In December, Britain said it had collected 60 million more Moderna COVID-19 vaccine doses to be delivered from this year to the coming year. Bancel said he strived for a variant-specific is growing to be ready by August, ahead of Britain’s autumn growing campaign.

The success of its vaccine has made the company is looking to expand globally through recent manufacturing facilities. Moderna is promoting manufacturing facilities in Kenya, Canada, and Australia.

Further details, like the location of the final plant in Britain, were being finalized, and financial terms were not exposed.

“We have a shortlist of a couple of sites,” Bancel said, saying that he hoped construction would begin this year.