As Samsung Biologics works to close a massive buyout to branch out into peptides, the Korean CDMO’s bread-and-butter contracting work continues to gin up big-ticket contracts from the drug industry.
In a securities filing Thursday, Samsung Bio unveiled a new biologics contract, worth $262 million, with an unnamed European pharmaceutical company. The manufacturing deal will run through the end of 2033, at which point the confidentiality surrounding the company and products produced will also lapse, according to Samsung Bio’s filing.
While Samsung Bio said it would keep its client’s identity under wraps “for reasons of business confidentiality,” it did caveat that the end date of that discretion agreement “is subject to change.”
Production under the agreement with take place at Samsung Bio’s sprawling manufacturing campus in Songdo, South Korea, the company explained in an emailed fact sheet. With the latest deal in place, the total value of contracts Samsung Bio has secured has breached $21.9 billion, the company added.
At present, the CDMO boasts a whopping 845 kL of manufacturing capacity globally, with most of that (785 kL) concentrated in its home country of South Korea. Meanwhile, the $280 million purchase of a GSK facility in Rockville, Maryland, in March recently set up the company with 60 kL of capacity at its first U.S. production site, too.
Looking ahead, the company has also secured territory for another biomanufacturing campus in Korea, plus, Samsung Biologics in July made a play for the burgeoning GLP-1 market when it agreed to put up $1.8 billion to acquire Swiss CDMO PolyPeptide.
Under the deal, slated to the biggest ever by a Korean biopharmaceutical company, Samsung Bio is in line to scoop up PolyPeptide API manufacturing sites in India, France, Belgium and Sweden, plus two U.S. sites in California. The move is expected to help Samsung Bio move beyond antibodies and antibody-drug conjugates to tackle peptide therapeutics, including GLP-1s.
As for the secrecy around Samsung Bio’s latest client, that discretion isn’t unheard of in the realm of contract manufacturing.
In fact, Samsung has announced multiple high-value deals with unnamed drugmakers in recent years, including a $1.3 billion contract with a U.S. pharma almost a year ago to the day. And last May, Samsung Bio struck a separate contracting accord with an undisclosed U.S. drugmaker valued at roughly 737 billion Korean won ($531 million).