The months-long search for buyers was unsuccessful: the three German BioNTech locations in Idar-Oberstein in Rhineland-Palatinate, in Marburg in Hesse and in Tübingen in Baden-Württemberg will close. The fact that sales of the plants could not be realized is essentially due to the current difficult market and investment environment, explained BioNTech.
According to the company, it will end in Tübingen at the end of 2027, in Marburg at the beginning of 2028 and in Idar-Oberstein at the end of 2028. According to the company, around 1,800 employees are affected. In order to make the site closures socially acceptable, additional severance pay conditions were agreed with the group works council. BioNTech initially did not provide any details.
Sales talks were unsuccessful
The Mainz company announced in the spring that BioNTech no longer wanted to operate the three locations. They justified this with insufficient utilization, excess capacity, cost savings and the focus on cancer medicine.
Internal experts and professional brokers had sounded out the sales of the locations, explained BioNTech. International, national and medium-sized companies and investors were addressed who, among other things, are active in the production of mRNA, antibodies and plasmids as well as in cell and gene therapy. There were audits and confidential discussions for all locations, but there was no conclusion in the cases of Marburg, Tübingen and Idar-Oberstein.
Things were different at the subsidiary JPT Peptide Technologies GmbH in Berlin, a provider of services for the research, development and analysis of peptides. These are short chains of amino acids. The workforce of around 130 positions was taken over by the Dubag Group, based in Munich.
Curevac founder accuses deception
The Marburg plant has so far produced mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccines as well as plasmid DNA, an important starting material for mRNA vaccines and cell therapies. It is located on the site of the historic Behringwerke in Marburg. BioNTech once took it over from the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis and invested millions.
In Idar-Oberstein, among other things, therapeutics for early clinical development phases are produced, and the location in Tübingen is the headquarters of CureVac, the former competitor in the race for a corona vaccine. BioNTech announced its takeover in the summer of 2025, and the billion-dollar transaction dragged on for months.
CureVac founder Ingmar Hoerr accused BioNTech of deception after the plant closures were announced. When taking over CureVac, it was agreed to create a mutually beneficial company. That was thrown out the window.
Vaccine demand has been declining for years
BioNTech, with around 7,200 employees worldwide, has been in a process of change and restructuring for years. BioNTech, together with its US partner Pfizer, once received the first market approval for a vaccine against Covid-19 and earned billions from it. But demand for the Covid-19 vaccine has been declining for several years, and the company does not yet have any other approved product.
Research is underway on a whole range of new products, particularly in oncology. The company also relies on mRNA-based immunotherapies and antibody-drug conjugates. The aim is to deliver chemotherapy active ingredients more specifically to cancer cells with the help of antibodies.
All of this costs a lot of money, so BioNTech is making losses. In the first six months of this year, the bottom line was a loss of 1.35 billion euros - and that at a time when the central heads, the couple Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci, are leaving BioNTech.
New company also in Mainz
Sahin and Türeci plan to dedicate themselves to developing the next generation of mRNA-based drugs in a new company. It has been clear since last week that the new company will be called Arife and will also have its headquarters in Mainz.
Sahin and Türeci want to remain shareholders in BioNTech. Sahin's successor as CEO of BioNTech will be Guido Oelkers by February 1, 2027 at the latest. In the 1990s, he worked for Hoechst AG, which no longer exists, and now comes from the Swedish biopharmaceutical company Swedish Orphan Biovitrum (Sobi), which he has headed since 2017.
