Celltrion Chairman Seo Jungjin: "Robots Will Be Deployed at New Plants"

During Dialogue with Shareholders After the General Meeting on the 24th

Seo Jungjin, Chairman of Celltrion Group, has announced plans to introduce robots at newly constructed biopharmaceutical manufacturing facilities. While he strongly warned of the changes in industrial sites and the employment market crisis caused by the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, he also presented a concrete blueprint to actively implement robots and AI in production and business operations.

Seo Jungjin, Chairman of Celltrion Group, is speaking at the regular general shareholders' meeting held on the 24th at Songdo Convensia, Yeonsu District, Incheon. Celltrion

During the Q&A session following the 35th regular shareholders’ meeting held on the 24th at Songdo Convensia in Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, Chairman Seo stated, "If the price of robots falls below 70 million won, robots will be introduced to Plants 4 and 5." He added, "We plan to deploy robots in all newly expanded plants, and they will also be introduced to existing facilities." The plan is to gradually convert existing plants to robot-centered processes as well, thereby securing global competitiveness.

On this day, Celltrion announced that it would simultaneously expand Plants 4 and 5, with a total capacity of 180,000 liters, by investing 1.2265 trillion won at its headquarters in the Songdo campus in Incheon. The newly established Plants 4 and 5 will incorporate state-of-the-art automation systems and smart factory technologies on a large scale, maximizing production process efficiency and flexibility. This is expected to enable both small-batch, multi-product manufacturing and large-scale mass production, allowing the company to respond swiftly not only to its current main products but also to the production needs of next-generation biosimilars and new drug portfolios scheduled for future release. The decision to expand these new plants was made both to prepare for the rapidly increasing production needs of follow-on pipelines and to proactively address the recent surge in contract manufacturing (CMO) inquiries.

Chairman Seo also pointed out that productivity improvements through the adoption of robotics and AI inevitably bring about the side effect of national-level job losses. He expressed concern, stating, "The introduction of AI and robots is likely to cause serious employment issues in the future," and, "From a national perspective, the employment problem will become increasingly severe over time." Celltrion believes that, while it can respond flexibly during its ongoing growth by reallocating rather than dismissing existing staff, there will be limits to creating new jobs across the broader industry.

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