image credit- shutterstock
South Korea-based Celltrion plans to secure additional manufacturing capacity through a large-scale expansion investment exceeding KRW 1 trillion at its Songdo headquarters to respond to rapidly increasing global demand for its biologics portfolio and further strengthen its global manufacturing competitiveness.
The expansion investment will be implemented in phases from this year through 2030 and will focus on expanding manufacturing infrastructure across the Songdo campus in Korea, the company’s production base in the US, and domestic business sites.
This investment goes beyond expanding manufacturing capacity and is intended to establish a long-term growth foundation to support the reliable production and supply of next-generation biosimilars and innovative drug candidates currently under development, while enabling the expansion of the company’s global contract manufacturing (CMO) business.
Celltrion will invest KRW 1.2265 trillion to construct Plants 4 and 5 with a combined capacity of 180,000 liters at its Songdo campus in Incheon, where the company’s headquarters are located.
The new facilities will incorporate advanced automation systems and smart factory technologies, which are expected to maximise production efficiency and operational flexibility. This will enable a wide range of production capabilities, from small-batch, multi-product production to large-scale manufacturing, allowing the company to respond more rapidly to the production needs of its next-generation biosimilars and novel drugs to be launched in the future as well as its current key products.
The planned facility expansion is intended to support the rapidly growing production demand of the company’s follow-on pipeline while proactively responding to increasing CMO requests.
To further strengthen its competitiveness in the United States, Celltrion has finalized the scope of expansion of the manufacturing facility in Branchburg, New Jersey. The planned expansion has been increased from the originally proposed 66,000 liters to 75,000 liters, bringing the facility’s total production capacity for drug substances (DS) from the current 66,000 liters to 141,000 liters.
As demand for local biologics manufacturing in the United States continues to grow rapidly, the Branchburg facility is expected to play a key role in supporting Celltrion’s supply of its products in the US and expanding its CMO business.
Once the facility expansions in Korea and overseas are completed, Celltrion’s DS production capacity will increase significantly from the current 316,000 liters to 571,000 liters. Upon completion of the expansion, Celltrion expects to achieve 100% internalization of DS production while realizing significant additional cost savings.
