CDMO Samsung Biologics bags $1.2B production contract, bringing total 2024 deal value to $3.3B-plus

With multiple high-profile production pacts already in the books for 2024, CDMO Samsung Biologics has hooked another big one.

Samsung has locked down a $1.2 billion contract with an unnamed Asia-based pharmaceutical company that’s expected to run through December 2037.

The manufacturing project, which will be carried out at Samsung’s biomanufacturing site in the Songdo area of Incheon, South Korea, brings the company’s total new contract value for the year to more than $3.3 billion, Samsung said in a release Tuesday.

Samsung did not elaborate on the identity of its new partner or the types of drugs it will help produce under the accord. The deal marks the largest contract signed by a single client in Samsung Biologics’ history, the company said.

Samsung Biologics will use this deal, and others inked this year, to “maintain momentum for further expansion,” the company’s CEO, John Rim, said in a statement.

On that front, Samsung now says it has partnered with 17 of the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies, up from 16 when the company reported second-quarter earnings in late July.

The CDMO remains on track to finish the buildout of a dedicated antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) facility by the end of year, and it expects its fifth production plant to come online in April 2025, the company sid.

That fifth facility will bring another 180 kiloliters of capacity to bear, for a total of 784 kL across Samsung’s Plants 1 through 5, all of which are in South Korea. Plant 5 will be located at a new campus near Samsung Biologics’ existing site in Incheon.

The new contract marks the latest in a series of major production agreements inked by Samsung Biologics this year.

Earlier this summer, the CDMO said it had signed a new deal with a large, unnamed U.S. drugmaker worth 1.46 trillion Korean won (about $1.05 billion). At the time, the company noted that the deal represented more than 39% of its total 2023 sales haul, which reached around 3.7 trillion won (roughly $2.7 billion).

Elsewhere, Samsung in March expanded a long-running partnership with Belgium’s UCB through a new drug substance manufacturing deal worth some $288 million. It made similar moves with an existing Baxter Healthcare pact in June, which will now see Baxter pay Samsung upwards of $233 million for its manufacturing services through the end of 2034.

Previously, Baxter had been on the hook to pay just $15 million for Samsung’s production help.

Contracts aside, Samsung Biologics’ sales have continued to steadily tick up throughout the year, as well.

For the second quarter, Samsung Biologics reported revenue of 1.16 trillion won ($842 million), signaling a nearly 34% year-over-year increase.