At the start of the pandemic, Fonterra stepped in to make 250,000 litres of hand sanitiser for New Zealanders. Now, the company is lending equipment to help produce a COVID-19 vaccine.
Fonterra’s equipment – a small homogeniser – is being loaned to the COVID-19 Vaccine Corporation (CVC) in New Zealand. To develop the vaccine, CVC needs to produce tiny biobeads, which are coated in protein or polypetide.
Chosen components from the SARS-Cov-2 virus are being used to coat these biobeads, which are simultaneously manufactured inside bacteria. The homogeniser from Fonterra is being used to open the bacteria in which CVC’s vaccine biobeads are made.
“Once the biobeads are released, we remove contaminating bacterial residues and end up with a pure vaccine preparation ready for injection,” said CVC COO Dr Andy Herbert.
CVC CEO Dr Robert Feldman said: “The process of developing a vaccine requires the use of many types of specialised equipment, some of which can be challenging to get access to.
“We are therefore very pleased to be able to access Fonterra’s resources and apply sophisticated equipment to the manufacture of our vaccine candidate.”
Fonterra director of category, strategy and innovation Mark Piper said it was good to be able to help in such an important cause.
“We always like to help out where we can, so when the team came and asked if they could borrow a homogeniser from the Fonterra Research and Development Centre, we quickly worked to free up the equipment for CVC. This could be good not just for CVC but good for New Zealand and the rest of the world,” he said.
The CVC estimates its first clinical trials will take place at the start of 2022 and is expected to cost around $8 million to complete.
Fonterra ranked in at #1 in the Top 100 Food & Drink Companies 2019 report.