Lonza Chairman “a little” disappointed with the Federal Council during Corona
Published: Sunday, May 5th 2024, 09:10
Back to Live Feed
The retiring Lonza Chairman Albert Baehny was "a little" disappointed that the Federal Council did not agree to his proposal for reserving coronavirus vaccine capacities in 2020. But the communication was not good either.
Lonza signed the contract with the US coronavirus vaccine manufacturer Moderna in April 2020, Baehny said in an interview with the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper. It was clear at the time that they would probably be the first to produce a vaccine.
"We had a pandemic, people were dying and we had a solution". He was convinced that the vaccine would be in short supply if they were successful. And that is exactly what happened.
At the end of April, he then wrote a letter to the Federal Council suggesting that Switzerland could possibly reserve capacity. Baehny also corrected earlier statements: it was not a question of the federal government buying or owning a production line.
Unfortunately, nothing came of the offer and there was no response from Bern. In hindsight, he had to admit that they had misunderstood each other to some extent. "The communication wasn't good," said Baehny. Nevertheless, he was "a little" disappointed.
Lonza is still benefiting
Lonza itself is still benefiting from its collaboration with Moderna today. "We have proven that we are capable of scaling a laboratory process into an industrial process in six months". The market registered this very accurately.
In recent years, Lonza has invested around 900 million francs annually in Visp VS, the workforce there has doubled to 5,000 employees since 2018 and the payroll amounts to over half a billion francs. This makes Visp the largest production site in the biotech industry worldwide.
Baehny rejects the idea that Lonza is taking workers away from the rest of the industry in Visp. "And would it be better if we invested in Singapore or North America?"
The 72-year-old Baehny is both Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO ad interim. He announced his resignation this Wednesday. The Fribourg native will remain Chairman of the Board of Directors of the sanitary technology group Geberit.
©Keystone/SDA
English 
German 
French 
Spanish 
Arabic