Pay attention: mRNA vaccine production on PEI is a game changer

My colleague, Don Mills, had an excellent conversation with the head of BioVectra on the Insights podcast recently. You can listen here or where ever you get your podcasts. Just search for Insights and add the words ‘Don Mill’s.

This is a big deal.

The federal government rarely - and I mean rarely - puts the big bucks into this type of project in Atlantic Canada. As I have pointed out before, the feds are good at supporting SMEs and will also invest in larger firms here but to allocate tens of millions of dollars to an mRNA facility on the Island - even with a local supplier like BioVectra - is a rarity.

There are Donald Savoie-esque reasons for this which I have talked about in the past.

But the bottom line is that this one did happen and we should be celebrating more.

While many were dozing, PEI has built up a cluster of biosciences activity and are now taking on national projects.

As for the BioAlliance, they may have to rethink the strategic goal of boosting private sector revenue from $265M to $500M by 2025. It looks like this one new manufacturing facility should blow through that target.