Samsung signs biologics deal with Roche
pharmafile | October 25, 2013 | News story | Manufacturing and Production |Â Â Korea, Roche, SamsungÂ
Roche is leaving nothing to chance in its pursuit of the biologics drug market, adding to its internal investment programme in manufacturing with a high-level outsourcing deal with Samsung BioLogics.
The Swiss pharma firm will ask Samsung to make some of its products at the company’s new site in Incheon, South Korea, which houses two facilities (one of which is still under construction).
Samsung’s march into the biologics manufacturing crystallised earlier this year with the opening of a 69,000 sq. m. mammalian cell production plant at Incheon, which has already secured some big-name clients including Bristol-Myers Squibb.
The Incheon facility has a total of 30,000-litres of bioreactor capacity and incorporates upstream and downstream processing units, a fill-and-finish suite, and warehousing with long-term cold storage. A second phase of construction – due to complete in 2016 and come online in 2017, will boost upstream capacity to 95,000 litres.
Roche has been boosting its own biologics manufacturing capacity of late, having this month announced plans to invest 800 million Swiss francs ($882m) over the next five years at plants in Germany, Switzerland and the US and create 500 new jobs.
The two companies are not releasing much detail about the contract, keeping tight-lipped about the financial terms of the deal as well as the identity of the products to be made.
However, the agreement with the world’s largest biopharma producer is a major endorsement of Samsung’s shift into biologics production, with Samsung BioLogics’ chief executive Tae-Han Kim describing it as a milestone for the company, which only started its move into the sector in 2010.
Tapping into Samsung’s capacity is indicative of the massive growth Roche expects for its biologics portfolio in the coming years. Earlier this month, the company’s chief financial officer Alan Hippe told investors back in 2010 that Roche was facing surplus capacity, which prompted it to suspend production at its new facility in Vacaville, California, and delay a new construction project.
“Since then, the anticipated product erosion from biosimilars has not occurred, and we have experienced growing demand for our products in established and emerging markets, as well as … robust growth in our pipeline,” he added. Vacaville’s CCP2 unit is one of the plants benefiting from Roche’s investment programme.
In 2010, Samsung set aside a warchest of $2 billion to further its ambitions in bioproduction, also saying it intended to push into the market for biosimilars, and in February it forged a deal with Merck & Co to develop multiple biosimilar products.
Phil Taylor
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