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Botswana Vaccine Institute fully automates with P300m investment

The Botswana Vaccine Institute (BVI) has invested in a new P300-million automated blending and filling production line to increase its capacity and production efficiency.

BVI plays an important role in assisting Africa in the management of livestock because it keeps abreast of global pharmaceutical standards governing emergency antigen banks for vaccines against foot-and-mouth disease.

"Our current facility is semi-automated whilst the new facility will be fully automated, thus ensuring a high level of accuracy," said Andrew Madeswa, BVI General Manager.

Madeswa said the facility also features automated cleaning and sterilisation tanks. The capacity of tanks has also been increased to 3000 litres from the current 2400 litres.

He added that the new facility will be run with the latest technology, meaning: "less human manipulation, faster processing of filling and labelling. Furthermore our new facility will have a data management system that will ensure easier supervision of our processes. We will also be able to better monitor humidity and pressure.”

Botswana Minister of Agriculture Fidelis Molao said the blending and filling line will help ensure that the complete process of BVI production is fully compliant with the international production standard Good Manufacturing Practise (GMP).

Molao said, "It is expected that this will open new markets as well as give the company added capacity to explore blending and filling of the vaccines.”

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