BioNTech is dismantling the industrial machine it built during the pandemic. After failing to find outside buyers for facilities designed to churn out billions of COVID-19 doses, the Mainz-based company will shutter three German plants and hand off vaccine production entirely to its partner Pfizer.
The wind-down will cost as many as 1,860 jobs — roughly a quarter of the group’s global workforce of about 7,200. Tübingen is first to close at the end of 2027, followed by Marburg in early 2028 and Idar-Oberstein at the end of 2028. A site in Tuas, Singapore, will also be given up in the first quarter of 2027, according to Reuters. Only the Berlin subsidiary JPT Peptide Technologies, which employs around 130 people, found a taker: it was sold to Munich-based Dubag Group.
Talks with works councils produced agreements on socially acceptable terms and additional severance payments. Not everyone is satisfied. CureVac founder Ingmar Hoerr has accused BioNTech of breaking promises made after it acquired the Tübingen business.
Overcapacity Meets a Shrunken Market
The closures stem from persistent overcapacity and a sharply cooled global appetite for COVID-19 vaccines. The changed investment climate scuppered any hope of selling the assets to contract manufacturers, leaving management with little choice but to pull the plug. For a research-driven pharma company with no second approved product on the market, state-of-the-art bioreactors have flipped from value drivers into a dead weight of fixed costs.
The retreat from in-house production is expected to deliver recurring annual savings of around EUR 500 million starting in 2029. Those freed-up funds are earmarked for clinical development of cancer drugs, part of a push to pool resources and reduce reliance on pandemic revenue.
The financial pressure is already visible. BioNTech booked a net loss of EUR 1.35 billion in the first half of 2026, widening from a shortfall of EUR 802.4 million a year earlier, as heavy research and development spending weighs on the balance sheet. Even so, the company held roughly EUR 16.6 billion in cash and marketable securities at the end of June.
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Founders Step Aside for a New Venture
Alongside the structural overhaul, a generational handover is under way at the top. Co-founders Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci plan to leave BioNTech by the end of 2026 at the latest to build a new biotech company, Arife. Both will stay on as shareholders and scientific advisers. Guido Oelkers is to take over as chief executive no later than February 1, 2027, and will be responsible for executing the oncology strategy.
That strategy centers on mRNA immunotherapies and antibody-drug conjugates, with the goal of filing for approval of several oncology candidates by 2030. Until that pipeline reaches market, BioNTech remains a research operation with a heavy capital burn — and something to prove all over again.
Legal Headwinds Add to the Load
A federal judge in Delaware on Wednesday rejected a motion by Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna to dismiss patent claims brought by Bayer and its Monsanto unit. The dispute concerns mRNA stabilization techniques that Bayer says were originally developed in the 1980s for plant research. The court ruled that neither patent invalidity nor non-infringement had been sufficiently established at this early stage, meaning the case will proceed — and could drag on for years.
Investors are approaching the long transformation with caution. The stock closed Wednesday at EUR 87.25 and was quoted pre-market at EUR 86.95, giving the company a market capitalization of EUR 21.79 billion. Shares are up a modest 6.9% since the start of the year, but remain 18% below their 52-week high of EUR 105.80.
By closing the plants, BioNTech is showing strategic resolve: protecting the pandemic windfall means refusing to subsidize orphaned factories. The rebuild, however, is a race against the clock.
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