Aspen Pharmacare, the owner of Africa’s first Covid-19 vaccination manufacturing plant, says it is hopeful that the AU’s call for international procurement agencies to buy its vaccines will see orders come in.
This comes as AU heads of state last week called on procurement agencies including vaccine alliance Gavi, which co-leads Covax, to start procuring at least 30% of their vaccines from the continent’s manufacturers. Covax was formed to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines throughout the world, including to poorer countries.
Speaking to Business Day on the sidelines of the two-day Manufacturing Indaba, held in Africa’s richest square mile in Sandton this week, Aspen head of strategic trade Stavros Nicolaou moved to allay fears that the company’s Gqeberha plant risks shutting down after receiving not a single order for Covid-19 vaccines.
He said Aspen was waiting to see whether the procurement agencies would indeed start diversifying and commit to future procurement of doses made in Africa.
“To have any sterile production lines vacant is like a cardinal sin because patients need to benefit from these or any other medicines,” Nicolaou said.
“We are going to see how it goes in the next few days, but we are not shutting down anything,” he said, adding that the company would have a clearer picture of a way forward once the agencies, who were expected to respond in the coming days, made commitments to make future purchases from Aspen.
“Africa needs to be given a chance and that means diversifying from existing suppliers,” said Nicolaou.
But “either we are going to get a volume soon, or we will pivot back to making other pharmaceutical products”, he said.
Aspen’s hi-tech plant was heralded as a trailblazer for an under-vaccinated continent frustrated by sluggish Western handouts. But the lack of interest from African governments and global agencies has left Aspen’s plans to make its own copy of the shot, branded Aspenovax, hanging in the balance.
Manufacturing is a key sector for SA’s economic recovery plan and Nicolaou cautioned that “white elephants” in the sector would not enhance the country’s growth ambitions.
The latest data by Stats SA illustrates that manufacturing production disappointed in April, falling 7.8%, mainly due to the floods in KwaZulu-Natal and electricity supply disruptions.
Demand for vaccines has, however, been waning in the West, leaving many countries with large stockpiles.
With only half of the population vaccinated so far, SA has seen a slow take-up, particularly among younger people.
After scrambling last year to secure supplies, the country has moved from a shortage to a surplus and now has more than 21-million doses on hand, 9.6-million of which are Pfizer jabs that expire in the next four to five months.
SA is struggling to find countries other than Kenya to take up 5-million Pfizer and 10-million Johnson & Johnson (J&J) doses donated by President Cyril Ramaphosa in May.
Many African states are already in line to receive stock from Covax, which has so many doses lined up already it recently said it has no immediate plans to buy stock from Aspen.
Meanwhile, the government, local vaccine manufacturers and organised labour have welcomed an agreement secured at the World Trade Organization last week to support the production of Covid-19 vaccines in developing countries.
The agreement allows governments to authorise local manufacturers to produce vaccines or their ingredients without the permission of the patent holders during a pandemic.
“The pressure to procure from Africa is growing and the voices are getting louder and louder,” said Nicolaou, adding that the AU statement was also clear that Africa must set up its own internal procurement mechanism.
The Government Employees Pension Fund, Aspen CEO Stephen Saad, Alexforbes Investments, Ceppwawu Investments and the Coronation Balanced Plus Fund are among some of the major shareholders of Aspen, which is valued at just more than R62bn on the JSE.
Aspen’s share price fell 1.77% to R132.87 on Thursday and is now down more than 40% so far this year.
With Tamar Kahn
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