Packer created images not compatible with VSphere

We’re trying to create OVA images using packer and virtualbox, and have discovered that they’re not compatible with VSphere 6.7. They work in VMWare Workstation, but the hardware versions are too recent for VSphere to handle. If we downgrade the hardware using ovftool after building the image, then we get import errors due to unrecognised device types (mostly on SATA controllers and the like).

Is it possible to create a VSphere-compatible OVA using packer and virtualbox? Has anyone succeeded in doing this? A workaround is to convert the image in VMWare Workstation (which they work in), but that’s a manual step and we much prefer to have our builds automated.

Our own VSphere is a hosted solution, and we’ve run into lack of permission issues when trying to use packer to build images against it directly.

Thanks.