With Samsung Biologics set to inaugurate its new “super plant” in South Korea this month, the company continues to flex its contract manufacturing muscle from the comfort of its home turf. But it has eyes on expanding elsewhere.
Given most of the CDMO’s business resides in Europe and the U.S., Samsung is “continuing to expand in all dimensions,” CEO John Rim said in a recent interview with Fierce Pharma.
Samsung Biologics is waiting for the “right time” to grow outside South Korea, the CEO added. When that time does come, Samsung could tackle plant construction alone or make its move via an acquisition, the CEO added.
In the U.S. specifically, Rim says Samsung has previously scoped out locations in a handful of states. “So, it’s not that we haven’t looked,” he said.
In fact, Samsung’s new super plant, also known as Plant 4, might have taken root someplace other than Korea were it not for “timing and speed.”
“We cannot build the facilities in the United States as quickly as we can in Korea,” Rim admitted.
“If you said, ‘we’re going to be building a facility from scratch, having it GMP ready in two years,’—I don’t think that is doable in the United States at this time,” Rim said.
Plant 4 started construction back in 2020. Samsung recently accelerated the project timeline with plans to bring 60,000 liters of capacity online by the end of this month.
That timeline—some 23 months from groundbreaking to GMP-ready—is “really consistent with Samsung’s speed,” Rim added. The second stage of the facility is expected to be complete sometime in the second quarter of next year, the CEO said.
Once fully complete, Plant 4 will boast more than 240,000 liters of capacity.
Overall, that means Samsung expects to have close to 620,000 liters of capacity by the end of 2023’s second quarter. That’s “approximately 30% of all CDMO capacity globally,” Rim reckons.
Back in Korea, meanwhile, Samsung already has big plans beyond its super plant, housed on land the CDMO calls Bio Campus I.
In July, Samsung said it had snapped up additional land in Incheon on which to build its new twin complex, Bio Campus II. The company acquired the parcel for 426 billion won ($323 million), and the plot of land is 30% larger than Samsung’s original campus. By 2032, Samsung expects it to house 4,000 employees.