Developing UK Vaccine Supply Chain Resilience for Covid and Potential Future Health Emergencies – Single Use Technologies, Biobags and Filters

Tender description

The Covid-19 pandemic has prompted inspiring collaboration between industry, academia, and government to discover, develop, manufacture and distribute vaccines. It has also demonstrated what level of response to demand is possible within existing supply chains. To build on this, the UK Government is developing a strategy which seeks to increase the UK’s vaccine supply resilience and on-shore manufacturing capability in response to Covid-19 and potential future health emergencies. As part of the strategy, the UK Vaccine Taskforce (VTF, a joint unit of BEIS & DHSC) is engaging the market to build its understanding of barriers, risks and opportunities to meet future demand and build resilience in the UK vaccines supply chains. The information gathered will be used to inform decisions about how the VTF can best facilitate companies to invest in increasing UK-based capacity and capability within key component areas used in vaccine manufacturing, to provide resilience and onshoring capacity Lot 1: The purpose of this PIN is to initiate market engagement. For this PIN, the VTF is seeking specifically to engage manufacturers of Single Use Technologies (used in direct contact with drug substance, drug product and/or ancillary production processes); Biobags (including Bioreactor bags and Biocontainer bags such as mixer bags and storage bags); and Filters used in the manufacture of vaccine drug substance, drug product, and critical ancillary areas. What the VTF is seeking to achieve by way of this PIN and market engagement is to gain an understanding of: organisations operating in the marketplace; their location; products made and supplied; and any barriers, risks, and opportunities to supply products into the vaccines supply chain. It is also important for VTF to understand companies’ commercial strategies, and where they have the greatest impact on supply chain resilience in the UK, to assess how the market is responding to challenges and opportunities. Additional information: Importantly, the VTF is issuing this PIN to allow organisations to register on the e-tendering platform (Delta) and to respond to an early engagement questionnaire, prior to commencement of any further engagement. Organisations who supply into Tier 1 Pharma companies or CDMO’s, that is, Tier 2 suppliers, and also their suppliers, are strongly encouraged to register.