Biopolis Special Economic Zone (SEZ) will be created in the Kirov region. The total amount of the project is more than 18 billion rubles, which mainly come as private investments. This was announced in an interview with TASS by Igor Vasiliev, the head of the region.
“The Kirov region is a historically developed center of Russia’s biotechnologies, with its rich biotechnological traditions and large-scale institutions. It is in Kirov that the first industrial production of penicillin was organized in 1944, and now Levintsy is home to Nanolek, which, in partnership with Sanofi, produces a wide range of vaccines, including pediatric ones,” Vasiliev stressed.
According to the governor, a biocluster has already been established in the Kirov region, and it includes 18 enterprises. Nanolek will become the anchor resident of the SEZ, and research and technological facilities are expected to appear around it.
The project is intended for the implementation over decades. “In Levintsy, near the airport, we will create Biopolis – a separate town comfortable to live in, and we also plan to develop the infrastructure with all the necessary elements, including schools, kindergartens, polyclinics, housing for employees, maybe a combined campus for several universities where students can live, study, and do internships, and foreign specialists can be invited there,” Igor Vasiliev said.
According to the head of the Kirov region, at the beginning of 2022 it is planned to apply to the Ministry of Economic Development for the creation of a special economic zone, and by 2024, to establish a separate municipality, a free economic zone, and start creating the environment that will become a part of Russia’s Sanitary Shield, a place where vaccines are developed and produced. In addition, it is planned to build a branch of the Chumakov Institute, which specializes in vaccines development, in the region by 2024.
Earlier it was reported that in 2021 the investments of Togliatti SEZ pharmaceutical enterprises amounted to 2.4 billion rubles.