THE Pingshan District Government and French pharmaceutical and health care company Sanofi have agreed to start a new round of cooperation, with a letter of intent on collaboration signed in Shenzhen on Tuesday, a day before French President Emmanuel Macron’s state visit to China.

According to the letter of intent, the two sides will continue to accelerate the access of innovative vaccine products and promote the high-quality development of Pingshan’s biomedical industry, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported.

Pingshan Party chief Yang Jun said that the current deep cooperation with Sanofi will definitely be conducive to the comprehensive and high-quality development of Pingshan’s biomedical industry, as well as to boosting the industry’s development in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA).

Thomas Triomphe, executive vice president of Sanofi, who leads the company’s vaccine R&D, industrial and commercial operations, said that Sanofi’s business, especially its vaccine business, has steadily developed in China, thanks to the highly open business environment Shenzhen and Pingshan created for foreign investors.

“We look forward to introducing more innovative products and preventive measures in China to better support China’s public health system. While meeting the Chinese people’s disease prevention needs, we also hope to contribute to the economic development of Shenzhen and the GBA,” Triomphe said in an interview with SZTV.

As a global health care leader, Sanofi has developed ties with Shenzhen quite early on. In 2019, the Shenzhen Municipal Government signed a memorandum of understanding on vaccine innovation strategic cooperation with Sanofi. In 2021, the Greater Bay Area International Vaccine Innovation Center was completed in Pingshan.

In addition, the municipal government has collaborated with Sanofi to create a “Shenzhen model” for flu vaccination and has successfully held multiple international vaccine summits in Pingshan.

Shenzhen Sanofi Pasteur Biological Products Co. Ltd., whose manufacturing base is located in Pingshan, is the first multinational vaccine company to enter China and the only one currently operating in China.

Established in 1996, the company is mainly engaged in supplying seasonal flu vaccines for adults and children on the Chinese mainland, as well as repackaging imported vaccine products.

Since 2007, Sanofi has invested 1.2 billion yuan (US$174.42 million) to achieve localized flu vaccine production.

In recent years, Pingshan has maintained an average annual increase of over 100 biomedical enterprises and a growth of over 20% in output value, according to statistics. By 2022, the number of biomedical firms in the district had exceeded 1,000.

The Chinese market has become Sanofi’s second-largest market globally. According to Sanofi’s 2022 financial report, the annual sales of Sanofi in China reached 3.123 billion euros (US$3.4 billion) in 2022, up by 6.2% year on year.  (Zhang Yu)