April 27, 2024

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[THE INVESTOR] Samsung BioLogics, which offers pharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing services, said on Jan. 15 that it’s too early to talk about the construction of a fourth production line as it has just finished building its third plant.

“Nothing has been decided, and a decision will depend on the volume of new orders for the third production site,” a Samsung BioLogics official told The Investor.

The remarks were in response to some local reports quoting CEO Kim Tae-han as saying that the company will break ground for a new plant with production capacity of 180,000 liters in Songdo, Incheon, as early as next year, on the sidelines of the JP Morgan Healthcare conference in San Francisco.

“What the CEO meant was that the fourth plant would be a duplication of the third one,” the official said.

Samsung BioLogics’ third plant -- completed in November -- is the world’s biggest single-site biologics drug manufacturing facility with a capacity of 180,000 liters.

Once it goes online in 2020, the Samsung affiliate is expected to have the world’s largest capacity for a biologics contract manufacturing organization, with total production capacity hitting 362,000 liters.

All three Samsung BioLogics plants are located in Songdo, and there is speculation that a fourth plant could be located in the same area.

Samsung BioLogics’ plans to boost capacity has been garnering much interest, especially after the firm completed three plants in just six years since its establishment in 2011. So far, the firm has won a total of 3.3 billion won (US$3.10 million) worth contracts to produce 15 products for 10 global pharmaceutical companies.

Response toward Samsung’s expansion plans are mixed, with some warning that future demand for pharmaceutical contract manufacturing services are hard to predict.

Despite such concerns, Celltrion, another Korean biopharma heavyweight, announced at the same forum in San Francisco that it would expand the production capacity of its upcoming overseas plant to 360,000 liters, triple the capacity that the drug maker had initially planned.

Meanwhile, the Samsung BioLogics CEO reaffirmed that its plant expansion plans hinge on progress made in the development of Alzheimer’s disease therapies.

“We will review the construction plans as soon as companies developing Alzheimer’s disease therapies show positive phase 3 clinical trial results in 2019,” he said.

Alzheimer’s is a challenging treatment area, and there is currently no cure. The world’s largest drug company Pfizer pulled the plug on its research for a therapy on Jan. 8. Eli Lilly and Merck have also suffered late-stage efficacy failures, but others such as Novartis, Janssen, Biogen, Abbvie and Eli Lilly are pushing ahead.

By Park Han-na (hnpark@heraldcorp.com)