Samsung Biologics wins $296m 10-year GSK contract

GSK has doubled down on its partnership with Samsung Biologics, inking a deal valued at 26.8% of the Korean CDMO’s 2021 revenues.

Details of the contract, released in a regulatory filing today, show that Pharma Giant GlaxoSmithKline has entered into a contract with Samsung Biologics worth KRW 420,667,219,640 ($296 million) beginning October 11 2022 and ending December 31 2030.

The deal represents 26.8% of the contract development and manufacturing organization’s (CDMO’s) full year 2021 revenues of KRW 1,568,006,928,039.

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GSK already contracts Samsung Biologics, having signed an eight-year agreement in May 2020 worth $231 million to secure capacity for several of its products including lupus treatment Benlysta (belimumab). The monoclonal antibody pulled in sales of £874 million ($985 million) for GSK in 2021, a 22% jump on the year prior.

Further details remain sparse, but the deal comes days after Samsung Biologics began operations at its fourth facility in Songdo, Incheon.

The fourth facility was announced in August 2020, and the initial 6 X 10,000 L of production capacity has come online despite global supply chain issues driven by the pandemic.

The so-called ‘super plant’ vies to be the world’s largest single biomanufacturing plant when fully operational next year, adding 240,000 liters of capacity to Samsung Biologics’ growing capacity. Between the four plants at Samsung Biologics’ Campus 1, the firm will boast a total of 620,000 liters at the site, representing about 30% of the total global third-party biologics capacity, the firm has said.

Four more facilities are planned in Incheon going forward, after the CDMO acquired further land within the Songdo International City High-tech Industrial Cluster for a cost of $347 million earlier this year.