After announcing plans last year to expand manufacturing in its home country, Korean CDMO newcomer Lotte Biologics has kicked off work on a sprawling facility along Incheon’s waterfront near Seoul.
Late last week, Lotte Biologics broke ground on its flagship facility at the Songdo Bio Campus in Incheon International City, South Korea. The company is pitching the production effort as a key part of its quest to become one of the top 10 contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs) in the world, Lotte said in a press release.
The company will invest roughly 4.6 trillion Korean won (about $3.3 billion) in the new site, which will span 202,285.2 square meters (some 2.2 million square feet) and house three production plants plus essential auxiliary buildings.
Lotte’s engineering and construction arm is taking charge over the design and construction of the first plant at the facility, the company added. Each plant is ultimately expected to boast 120,000 liters of production capacity for a total capacity of 360,000 liters across the entire campus.
All told, building out and staffing the new facility is expected to generate 37,000 related jobs, Lotte Biologics pointed out.
“Lotte Biologics is committed to evolving into a global top 10 bio-CDMO by 2030,” Lotte Biologics’ CEO, Richard Lee, said in a statement. “Through this growth, we aspire to serve as a driving force to propel Korea to the forefront of the global bioeconomy, establishing our nation as a leading force in this critical sector.”
Lotte first hinted at plans for the new facility when it unveiled a land purchase agreement with the Incheon Free Economic Zone Authority in October.
At the time, Lotte said it expected that plants 1, 2 and 3 would be completed in 2025, 2027 and 2030, respectively.
Founded back in the late 1960s, Lotte Group is one of Korea’s largest conglomerates with ties to the food and beverage, retail, chemical and hotel and service sectors. The company’s pivot into life sciences, for its part, is relatively new.
Lotte kicked off its CDMO ambitions in May 2022 when it splashed out $160 million for a Bristol Myers Squibb facility in East Syracuse, New York, where the Korean company plans to rapidly scale and expand its contract manufacturing options in North America.
The plant handover from BMS to Lotte Biologics wrapped up in early 2023.
By Fraiser Kansteiner
Source: fiercepharma.com
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