Sweden's Recipharm will produce doses of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine candidate in central France, the company said on Wednesday, adding it had started recruiting and investing to start manufacturing.
Recipharm, a contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO) that has four plants in France, said it had signed a letter of intent with the U.S. company and that it was expecting a final agreement to be reached next month.
The doses would be produced at Recipharm's facility in Monts.
Financial details were not disclosed.
The European Union struck a deal on Tuesday for up to 160 million doses of Moderna's vaccine candidate, taking the bloc's potential stock of COVID-19 shots to nearly 2 billion.
Last week, Moderna said its experimental vaccine was 94.5% effective in preventing COVID-19 based on interim data from a late-stage clinical trial.
There is no internationally approved vaccine yet to prevent COVID-19 caused by the new coronavirus which has killed more than 1.4 million people and derailed the world economy.
(Reporting by Matthias Blamont; editing by Louise Heavens and Jason Neely)
