Lotte Group, a South Korean conglomerate that sells everything from gum to hotel rooms, is doubling down on drug manufacturing at home and abroad after the launch of its pharmaceutical arm.
The planned expansion of Lotte Biologics will build on the $160 million purchase of a Bristol-Myers Squibb plant in upstate New York expected to close later this year. The company also intends to spend $1 billion in South Korea to build a facility that’s five-to-six times larger, while looking for acquisition opportunities in Europe and Boston, Lotte Biologics’ Chief Executive Richard Lee said in an interview.
The new direction comes after a number of prominent South Korean family-run businesses — so-called chaebols that include Samsung Biologics and SK Bioscience — turned to the highly-profitable contract manufacturing sector of the $1.3 trillion global biopharma business. Lee plans to focus on infused medicines for ailments like cancer that are in high demand, sidestepping the rollercoaster of production that’s been driven by the COVID-19 pandemic in recent years.