S.Africa's Aspen aims to expand vaccine capacity to 1.3 billion doses a year

GQEBERHA, South Africa (Reuters) - South Africa's Aspen Pharmacare wants to increase vaccine manufacturing capacity at its domestic plant to 1.3 billion doses a year, CEO Stephen Saad told a news conference on Monday.

Aspen, which has a fill and finish deal for Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine, has said it has capacity to manufacture up to 300 million doses a year of the J&J vaccine. It was not immediately clear from Saad's speech whether he was referring to expanding capacity for COVID-19 vaccines only or all vaccines.

(Reporting by Promit Mukherjee; Writing by Alexander Winning; Editing by David Goodman)