Dispatches from Korea
Reclaiming Songdo
Songdo and the nearby Incheon international airport are around an hour away from Korea’s capital Seoul.
Up until the late-1990s, the land was just a marshy stretch of tidal flats in the Yellow Sea, but within a few years the government reclaimed the land and began building a ‘smart city’ and a business development area.
“Celltrion was the first company to build a manufacturing facility here in 2002,” we were told.
The first facility has a capacity of 50,000L, and a second plant housing an additional 90,000L – six 15,000L bioreactors – was completed in 2011. Plans for a third plant with 140,000L capacity have been drawn up.
“Between Celltrion and Samsung Biologics, Songdo will have the largest biomanufacturing capacity in the world.”
Nearby contract biomanufacturer Samsung Biologics is also constructing a third facility, and within the next few years Songdo will boast 670,000L of biologics capacity.