The vaccine manufacturer cannot find any buyers for the Idar-Oberstein, Marburg and Tübingen plants. 1,800 employees lose their jobs. A former competitor complains – even at himself.
Munich. 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 from next year. The Handelsblatt had already reported last week that Biontech was unable to find buyers for the plants.
According to the company, around 1,800 employees are affected - almost a quarter of Biontech's workforce. 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.
Biontech said the failed buyer search was essentially due to the current difficult market and investment environment. In order to make the site closures socially acceptable, additional severance pay conditions were agreed with the group works council. Biontech did not initially provide any details.
“Despite intensive efforts by everyone involved and a broad sales process, unfortunately it was not possible to realize a purchase,” said a spokeswoman for the company when asked by Handelsblatt.
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. Biontech once took it over from the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis and invested millions.
In Idar-Oberstein, Biontech produces, among other things, therapeutics for early clinical development phases, 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.
Biontech announced in March that it would cut up to 1,860 jobs and close the plants in Idar-Oberstein, Marburg and Singapore as well as the locations of the acquired competitor Curevac.
Biontech cited insufficient utilization, overcapacity, cost reductions and the focus on cancer medicine as reasons. At that time, Curevac founder Ingmar Hoerr accused Biontech of deception. When taking over Curevac, it was agreed to create a mutually beneficial company. That was thrown out the window. “The whole thing is toxic,” he told Handelsblatt on Monday.
Hoerr now regrets the takeover of Curevacs by Biontech because of the factory closures. He described the fact that there was no contractual guarantee of the existence of the Curevac plants for several years as a “major faux pas on the part of the supervisory board and on my part as a shareholder”. And he said: “All the government money is now in the landfill.”
"Uğur Şahin and I are at very different points. But we are both experiencing how the legacy of what we have built together with our employees is slipping away," said Hoerr. Şahin founded Biontech together with his wife Özlem Türeci.
Internal experts and professional brokers have sounded out the sales of the locations, according to 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.
Apparently Moderna could not be won over as a buyer of the works either. In the Handelsblatt interview, Moderna boss Stephane Bancel said for the first time that Moderna was interested in the works of its main competitor. “If we found the right partnership with the German federal government, these systems would be an interesting option – compared to a new building,” said Bancel.
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.
Biontech, together with its US partner Pfizer, once received the first market approval for a vaccine against Covid-19 and earned billions from it. The company became world famous. But demand for the Covid-19 vaccine has been declining for several years, and the company does not yet have any other approved product.
Biontech, with around 7,200 employees worldwide, has been in a process of change and restructuring for years. 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 using 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 (previous year: 802.4 million) - and that at a time when the central heads Şahin and Türeci are leaving Biontech. They will do this by the end of 2026 at the latest and 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. Şahin and Türeci want to remain shareholders in Biontech.
Şahin's successor as CEO of Biontech will be Guido Oelkers by February 1, 2027 at the latest. He worked for Hoechst AG in the 1990s, among others, and now comes from the Swedish biopharmaceutical company Swedish Orphan Biovitrum (Sobi), which he has headed since 2017.
