Lotte Biologics’ $1B investment brings it closer to becoming a global top 10 CDMO
As an emerging contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), Lotte Biologics is rapidly expanding with a focus on monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and the antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) market.
The company is investing $1 billion in its Songdo Bio Campus in South Korea, with Plant 1 scheduled for completion this year and full-scale commercial production by 2027 — bringing online 120,000 liters of biopharmaceutical manufacturing capacity. The plan overall is to build three plants at the Incheon site by 2030 and achieve full operation by 2034.
CEO James Park, who took the helm of Lotte Biologics in December 2024, told Pharma Manufacturing that “there’s definitely going to be a need for more mAbs in the near future, which is one of the reasons why we’re building large capacity in Korea.”
At the same time, with the looming threat of tariffs from the Trump administration, Park sees his CDMO as well-positioned to manage the geopolitical tensions and uncertainty in the industry with its U.S. footprint. “We’re in a good place in terms of having a facility in Syracuse, New York,” he said.
Created in 2022, Lotte Biologics has made no secret of the fact that the company’s ambition is to become a global top 10 CDMO by implementing a dual-track strategy of acquisition and building infrastructure — with an initial public offering targeted for 2028.
Lotte Biologics’ parent company Lotte Corporation in 2022 paid $160 million to Bristol Myers Squibb for its biopharmaceutical production facility in Syracuse, New York, which became the hub for North American operations.
The Syracuse Bio Campus provides comprehensive end-to-end biologic drug substance manufacturing capabilities, including an on-site cell bank facility and cryogenic storage. The site’s infrastructure includes eight 5,000L stainless steel bioreactors, three inoculation suites, and two purification suites.
The Syracuse site received a “flawless” quality evaluation last year, according to Lotte Biologics, with no findings reported during inspections by Japan’s Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency and a routine audit by the FDA.
Park noted that Lotte Biologics recently built a new $100 million ADC facility at its Syracuse campus, which will be operational starting next week with one customer beginning tech transfer. “It’s a separate building that has all the production as well as quality, lab, and development support,” he said. “We can manufacture the mAbs and do the conjugation.”
Lotte Biologics is looking to collaborate with drug product partners in North America to provide a one-stop ADC service. The company’s proprietary ADC platform, SoluFlex Link, features a linker technology jointly developed with South Korea’s Kanaph Therapeutics — a biotech venture specializing in drug-conjugation technology — and is designed for a wide range of antibodies and payloads in development and manufacturing to boost production efficiency and therapeutic performance.
“There’s some momentum on the ADC front but it’s not a big volume product compared to the mAbs,” Park observed. “For the next five to 10 years, I think the mAbs and ADCs are going to rule a little bit more and that’s where we’re focusing on.”
While Park sees the value of both stainless steel and disposable manufacturing, he noted that at its Syracuse campus the company leverages single-use bioreactors, which are “great” for ADCs. However, for larger capacity, stainless steel bioreactors are beneficial, according to Park. The manufacturing capabilities for Lotte Biologics’ Plant 1 at the Songdo Bio Campus will include eight 15,000L stainless steel bioreactors.
Lotte Biologics recently teamed with Boston-based Asimov to integrate cell line development technology with GMP manufacturing capabilities. The partnership will combine Asimov’s CHO Edge platform, which uses synthetic biology and AI-driven analysis to optimize Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell lines for antibody and protein therapeutic production.
Asimov is “mainly a cell line development company making cell lines for a lot of the biotech companies,” according to Park, who sees the potential opportunity for these biotechs to ultimately leverage Lotte Biologics’ CDMO services.
Lotte Biologics has validated the scalability of the Asimov platform at its Syracuse campus. Under the teaming, the companies will offer end-to-end CDMO services, with the goal of streamlining the transition from cell line development to commercial-scale biopharma production.
“We have the best of two worlds: one in the U.S. and one in Korea,” Park concluded. “We’re following the molecule model where we started in Syracuse and now in Songdo.”
