COVID-19 vaccine maker BioNTech BNTX,
has started production at a new location in Germany, in a move that will help alleviate stock shortages of the shot it developed with Pfizer PFE,
The plant will produce mRNA, the active ingredient in the shot, which will then be purified and concentrated before being delivered to partner sites for finalization. “The first vaccines to be produced at the Marburg site are expected to be delivered in early April,” BioNTech said in a statement Wednesday. The batch must be approved by the European Medicines Agency. BioNTech has acquired the site from the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis NVS,
NOVN,
last year as part of a goal to increase production of its shot to 2 billion this year. The plant has the capacity to produce up to 750 million doses of vaccine per year. The European Union is under fire for a slow roll-out of vaccines, exacerbated by delivery delays by pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca AZN,
AZN,
and Pfizer at European factories. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen admitted Wednesday that the EU was too late to allow the use of vaccines. “We are still not where we want to be,” von der Leyen said during a plenary session of the EU parliament.