"'Merger On Hold' Celltrion Pharm Presents Vision to Become Top 5 Domestic Pharmaceutical Company by 2030"

CELLTRION PHARM announced its ‘Vision 2030’ on the 19th, aiming to become one of the top five pharmaceutical companies in Korea by 2030. The company aspires to achieve a quantum jump based on strengthening its core business capabilities and differentiated growth strategies by division.

Exterior view of Celltrion Pharm factory in Cheongju, Chungbuk [Photo by Celltrion Pharm]

As a comprehensive pharmaceutical company manufacturing and selling chemical and biopharmaceutical products, CELLTRION PHARM carefully assessed its current capabilities and presented this vision by proposing detailed challenges for each division: manufacturing, research, and sales.

In the manufacturing division, the company plans to expand production capacity centered on its core facility, the Cheongju plant. The Cheongju plant is the key production base for chemical products within the group, certified by international organizations in the US, Europe, Japan, and Brazil for Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards for pharmaceutical manufacturing and quality control. It also has facilities capable of producing 16 million prefilled syringes (PFS) annually.

Starting this year, CELLTRION PHARM intends to accelerate growth by gradually increasing the proportion of PFS-form biopharmaceuticals, which have entered full-scale commercial production. To proactively respond to the rapidly growing demand for PFS-form medicines, the company plans to build an additional production line using approximately 13,500㎡ (4,100 pyeong) of available space within the Cheongju plant. Once the expansion is complete, production capacity is expected to increase up to three times the current level. Based on this production capacity and global certifications, the company also plans to actively develop its global contract manufacturing organization (CMO) business.

On the research and development (R&D) front, CELLTRION PHARM plans to strengthen related capabilities by reinforcing specialized personnel and to accelerate the development of antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) anticancer drugs and new drug platform technologies. To this end, the company expanded and reorganized its R&D organization last year, relocating it from Cheongju to the Global Biotechnology Research Center in Songdo, Incheon, and elevating its status from under the manufacturing division to directly under the CEO. The company aims to develop not only new drug platform technologies but also innovative new drugs, enhancing sales through technology transfers and establishing itself as a new drug development company.

In terms of sales, the company will actively expand its portfolio of chemical and biopharmaceutical products. The six biosimilar products currently supplied in the domestic market, including CELLTRION’s Remsima and Uplyma, will be significantly expanded to a total of 22 products by 2030. Autoimmune disease treatment Stekima, ophthalmic disease treatment Idengelt, and allergic asthma treatment Omliclo have completed domestic approval and are about to be launched. In the chemical pharmaceutical sector, the company plans to secure additional high value-added products through in-house development and active technology acquisition, expanding its product portfolio to establish differentiated competitiveness.

This vision announcement is interpreted as a result of the recent postponement of the merger with CELLTRION. CELLTRION PHARM had been pursuing a merger with CELLTRION, but on the 16th, it decided not to proceed with the merger at this time after up to 96% of CELLTRION shareholders opposed it. The majority of the opposing CELLTRION shareholders cited dissatisfaction with the merger ratio as the main reason. Since both companies are publicly listed, the merger ratio is determined based on stock prices. However, many CELLTRION shareholders believe that CELLTRION PHARM’s stock price is currently overvalued and that CELLTRION shareholders would incur losses in the merger. In fact, in a survey related to the merger, the most frequently cited prerequisite for pursuing the merger was either an increase in CELLTRION’s stock price or a reduction in the merger ratio between the two companies.

A CELLTRION PHARM official said, “Based on the accumulated capabilities and competitiveness, all business divisions have grown evenly, resulting in approximately double the sales over the past five years. As a comprehensive pharmaceutical company with a diversified portfolio and sales structure, we will do our best to sustain this growth trend and achieve our goal of becoming one of the top five domestic companies by 2030.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.