Emergent BioSolutions Brand Guidelines: BioPort, Lansing & the Baltimore Plant

A state laboratory in Lansing.

Emergent BioSolutions began with a laboratory in Lansing, Michigan. English Wikipedia gives its founding date as 5 September 1998, under the name BioPort, with Fuad El-Hibri as founder. BioPort bought the anthrax-vaccine plant owned by the state of Michigan through its Michigan Biologic Products Institute, together with the rights to make the vaccine for the U.S. military.

The start was difficult. An Associated Press report published by The Michigan Daily on 23 January 2002 described the aging state-owned laboratory, bought in 1998, as the only U.S. laboratory making anthrax vaccine, and said that four years after the purchase BioPort had not shipped a single dose to the Pentagon because it had not been able to pass Food and Drug Administration inspections, even though the Pentagon had paid toward renovating and expanding the laboratory; the report named El-Hibri as chief executive and a major investor. English Wikipedia records that in 2000 the company was the subject of Congressional hearings and FDA action, and that after the 2001 anthrax attacks BioPort began supplying its vaccine to U.S. biodefense agencies.

The company took the Emergent BioSolutions name in 2004, according to English Wikipedia, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2006 under the symbol EBS. Its headquarters are in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The anthrax vaccine, sold as BioThrax, stayed at the core of the business; English Wikipedia describes it as the only anthrax vaccine licensed by the FDA.

Biodefense, travel vaccines and Narcan.

Growth came through acquisitions. English Wikipedia lists the purchase of Cangene of Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 2013; the spin-off of the biosciences division as Aptevo Therapeutics in Seattle in August 2016; the ACAM2000 smallpox vaccine, bought from Sanofi Pasteur in 2017; and, in 2018, both Adapt Pharma, maker of the Narcan naloxone nasal spray, and the vaccine maker PaxVax, whose range included the typhoid vaccine Vivotif and the cholera vaccine Vaxchora. It also records a botulism antitoxin, BAT, supplied to the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile, and notes that in June 2012 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services chose Emergent, alongside Novartis and the Texas A&M University System, as one of three Centers for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing, a public-private programme for producing medical countermeasures in a national emergency.

Narcan then moved onto open shelves. On 29 March 2023 the FDA announced that it had approved Narcan 4 mg naloxone nasal spray for over-the-counter use, which it called the first naloxone product approved for use without a prescription, and stated that the approval was granted to Emergent BioSolutions.

The travel vaccines later moved on. English Wikipedia’s article on Bavarian Nordic records that in February 2023 the Danish company announced it would acquire Vivotif, Vaxchora and a late-stage chikungunya vaccine candidate from Emergent, and it now lists Vivotif, Vaxchora and the chikungunya vaccine Vimkunya among Bavarian Nordic’s products. In a March 2025 news release Emergent described its work as preparing for health threats such as smallpox, mpox, botulism, Ebola, anthrax and opioid overdose emergencies.

Design and documentation.

Vaccine makers sell to health ministries, procurement agencies, hospitals and clinicians long before any patient sees a pack, and their visual language reflects that audience. The imagery tends to stay close to the work itself: gloved hands holding a vial up to the light, rows of filled vials on a stainless line, and researchers in lab coats at a bench or a microscope. The point of these pictures is to show process and care rather than spectacle.

Production is a second recurring subject. Company photographs often show clean production suites, with staff in full gowns, hoods and masks behind glass, and long views of filling lines, bioreactors and freezers. For mRNA companies in particular, the plant itself has become part of the story, and new sites tend to be photographed and announced as milestones in their own right.

A third strand is global health. Vaccine makers frequently show clinics, community health workers and the cold chain: insulated boxes, refrigerated trucks and storage rooms that keep doses within a temperature range on the way to where they are used. Maps, partner logos and the names of public bodies often sit alongside these images, because much of the business runs through governments, international agencies and non-profit funders.

The trade has its own meeting places. Conferences such as the World Vaccine Congress and ESCMID Global, the congress of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, bring companies, researchers and buyers together. In a field where so many pictures show similar vials, gowns and laboratories, a name, a typeface and a single accent colour often do much of the work of telling one company from another.

Baltimore, 2021, and a smaller network.

The company’s COVID-19 work centred on its Bayview plant in East Baltimore. English Wikipedia, drawing on reporting by The New York Times and others, records that in 2020 Emergent agreed to manufacture vaccine there for Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca; that audits in 2020 found problems including cross-contamination, improper disinfection and gaps in staff training; and that in March 2021 ingredients of the two vaccines were mixed up, leading to about 15 million Johnson & Johnson doses being discarded. In April 2021 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ordered the plant to stop making the AstraZeneca vaccine and placed Johnson & Johnson in charge of production there, and Emergent then halted vaccine production at the FDA’s request. A U.S. House subcommittee opened an investigation that month and held a hearing on 19 May 2021. The FDA allowed the plant to restart Johnson & Johnson production in July 2021. The problems also changed a partnership closer to home: English Wikipedia records that Emergent had been selected to make Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine at one of its Maryland sites, but that Novavax later moved to a different manufacturer under a new agreement overseen by the U.S. government.

The aftermath ran for years. On 15 January 2026 New York’s attorney general announced a settlement under which Emergent agreed to pay penalties and improve its executive trading policies, over its approval of a former chief executive’s share-trading plan during the AstraZeneca contamination problems. In March 2025 Emergent agreed to sell the Bayview drug-substance plant to Syngene International, saying the sale was expected to close in the first quarter of 2025, that the FDA had classified a March 2024 inspection of the site as “No Action Indicated,” and that it would keep facilities in Lansing and Winnipeg; Emergent said on 19 March 2025 that it had completed the sale. That release named Joe Papa as president and chief executive.

For a design guide, Emergent BioSolutions shows a company built around biodefense contracts and government stockpiles, with one widely sold consumer product in Narcan. Compare Novavax, also based in Gaithersburg and once a manufacturing partner, and Bavarian Nordic, which took over its travel vaccines. For this guide we use a deep navy, slate and a muted amber with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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