February 22, 2017
Ceva forms joint venture with Chinese vaccine company
In the presence of Chinese prime minister Li Keqiang and French prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve, Ceva and EBVAC have signed a joint-venture agreement to create a new business, Ceva EBVAC, focused on the swine sector.
EBVAC was founded in 2005 by China Animal Health and Epidemiology Center (CAHEC), through its subsidiary company Qingdao Yebio, a part of the National Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture. The company is based in Hangzhou City and focuses on vaccine research, production and service.
The company is recognised as a National High-Tech Enterprise and has a broad network of scientific partnerships with local research institutes and universities and has an international R&D joint-venture with the University of Cambridge, UK, CAMBIVAC.
Ceva will hold the majority of shares in the new partnership and through the addition of its own products to the EBVAC portfolio of vaccines, aims to create an innovative, market-leading company.
Ceva has been present in China for 15 years and since 2011 has entered into a number of partnerships (for e.g. joint-venture Ceva Huadu, scientific cooperation agreement with South China Agricultural University (SCAU), training programme for producers and veterinarians with the University of Beijing) designed to share knowledge and ensure that the company's international swine expertise can be applied to local conditions and diseases in China.
The new company Ceva EBVAC will benefit from the extensive scientific networks already established by its two partners, who have both agreed to invest significantly in a new research and development programme.
In addition, EBVAC has recently made significant investment to build a world-class, industrial facility that will permit this new dynamic in R&D to be converted into vaccines of the highest quality.
Combining the two sales forces and training them to roll out Ceva's swine management programmes -Lung programme and Respinomics - will allow the company to reach many more swine producers and encourage them to adopt the "new-style professional farming methods" recommended by the Chinese government in its latest Five-Year Plan.
Dr. Marc Prikazsky, chairman and managing director of Ceva, said, "I am delighted that EBVAC and their shareholders have accepted our offer to create this exciting, new partnership. China is a country that no global animal health company can ignore. Given that half of the world's pigs are raised here and demand for pork products is set to rise even further, if you are not present in this market, you simply cannot be considered a global swine company."
