Expanding vaccine mfg. with design of $109M Montreal facility

“We operationalize our purpose of engineering a better future for our planet and its people by working with clients in this space to ramp up their facilities to deliver cutting-edge medicine in a post-pandemic world,” said Ian L. Edwards, president and CEO of AtkinsRéalis. “Having completed prior phases of work on this project for Jubilant HollisterStier, this new mandate is an endorsement of the quality of our service level, innovation and expertise.”

AtkinsRéalis’ Industrial team will provide an integrated end-to-end solution for this phase of the project, including design and professional engineering services for the facility and its manufacturing processes. Previous project mandates by AtkinsRéalis included concept design and preliminary engineering. The new spaces are expected to be operational by late 2026.

The upgrades to the facility will increase its “fill and finish capacity” by over 100 per cent. Fill and finishing refers to the process of filling vials with vaccine and finishing the process of packaging and labelling the vaccines for distribution. Expanding the already 40,000 sq. ft facility will create a world-class sterile manufacturing site, offering a wide range of fill and finish capabilities with flexibility in format, type (live, mRNA, and inactivated/subunit) and batch sizes.

This flexible manufacturing platform is important as it will allow the facility to address future health emergencies by producing multiple forms of vaccines for various diseases, whether existing or novel.

The facility’s expansion will generate contract development and manufacturing activities for other Quebec biopharmaceutical companies across the life sciences supply chain. Jubilant HollisterStier’s expansion is partially funded by the Government of Canada’s Strategic Innovation Fund, as well as by the province of Quebec.