The first section of the barracks area adjacent to the company’s headquarters in Mainz will be received by the biotech in about six weeks, beginning 2022, Sahin said. “New laboratories and office spaces are being built there.” The remaining area of ​​the Bundeswehr site will be free to the company in early 2023. “Then we will have twice the space we currently have,” Sahin said. A total of ten new buildings are planned or already under construction in Mainz. A campus for science and a smaller campus for administration are to be built. “There is also a cancer therapy manufacturing facility and office space spread throughout the city.”

At the Marburg location, production will continue to expand, the biotech’s founder explained. “The lion’s share of commercial production will remain there.” In Marburg, the biotech produces a large quantity of ready-to-fill COVID-19 vaccines. “There too, we can imagine ourselves to be established more broadly,” Sahin said. Much has also happened at the Idar-Oberstein production site, where the biotech has just commissioned new laboratories.

According to Sahins, Biontech currently has approximately 1,800 employees in Mainz and 2,800 employees worldwide. Over the next five to eight years, the workforce at Mainz should increase from 3,000 to 4,000, the Biontech founder said. The Mayor of Mainz, Michael Ebling (SPD), recently said that he expects the company to invest a total of one billion euros in Mainz over the next ten years.