£15.9m for lipids firm in Leek to boost UK’s mRNA tech

Staffordshire investment is part of a new £1.4 billion fund for critical industries

A UK government grant of £15.9 million to chemical producer Croda is expected to “significantly increase production capacity” for an essential ingredient in mRNA Covid-19 vaccines and create “a number of jobs”, the government has said.

This should help boost the range and volume of the UK’s capacity to manufacture specialty lipids—fatty molecules used to carry other components—for use in mRNA technologies that have “the potential to play a transformational role” in various vaccines, as well as gene therapies for cancer and heart disease, it said.