Merck & Co./MSD has agreed to acquire a vaccines manufacturing facility in Dundalk, Ireland, from WuXi Vaccines, a wholly owned subsidiary of WuXi Biologics, a biologics CDMO, for approximately $500 million. 

In 2019, WuXi Vaccines announced an investment to build a dedicated vaccine-manufacturing facility for Merck, including for drug-substance manufacturing (DS), drug-product manufacturing (DP), manufacturing science and technology labs, and quality control (QC) labs. Since 2022, the facility has been focused on technology-transfer activities to manufacture vaccines for the global market. The facility received a GMP license from the Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA), Ireland’s pharmaceutical regulatory authority, in July 2022. The main production facility (including DS, DP, the main QC lab, warehouse, and utilities) is slated for GMP certification “in due course” in 2025, according to information from WuXi Vaccines.  

The 15,520-square-meter facility currently employs 200 workers, and it is projected to add another 150 employees by the end of this year (2025), according to IDA Ireland, Ireland’s foreign direct investment agency, and will add to Merck’s footprint in Ireland. The company currently has over 3,000 employees working across seven locations in Ireland in Counties Carlow, Cork, Dublin, Meath, and Tipperary. The Dundalk site will become part of the company’s existing network of five large-scale pharma manufacturing, research, and development sites in Ireland—MSD Ballydine, MSD Brinny, MSD Carlow, MSD Dunboyne, and MSD Biotech, Dublin; the company also has animal health and human health operations across two locations in Dublin. 

WuXi Vaccines provides vaccine and preventive antibody’s development and manufacturing services on clinical and commercial scales for a variety of vaccine modalities (i.e., recombinant protein, viral, viral vectored, virus-like particles, bacterial outer membrane vesicles. nucleic acid, and conjugated vaccines). This transaction has no impact on the company’s biologics manufacturing facilities in Ireland and vaccine facilities in Suzhou, China.  

The transaction is expected to be concluded in the first half of 2025, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.  

Source: IDA Ireland and WuXi Vaccines