Celltion Chairman Seo Jung-jin announced Thursday the biopharmaceutical group will invest 40 trillion won ($33.6 billion) and create some 110,000 jobs by 2030 to establish itself as a global leader.

Speaking at Incheon City Hall, Seo pitched the future of making South Korea the hub of global biopharma industry, with a global health care logistics network.

Celltrion, headquartered in Songdo, Incheon, will collaborate with local governments such as Incheon and North Chungcheong Province to build a bioindustrial valley to invigorate Korean raw material businesses, he said during a press conference.

The 40 trillion won budget will be invested in three major areas of Celltrion’s business -- 25 trillion won for biopharmaceutical business in Songdo, 5 trillion won for chemical pharmaceutical business in Ochang, North Chungcheong Province, and 10 trillion won for U-Healthcare platform business which involves artificial intelligence and medical database service.

During its shareholders meeting in March, Celltrion had vowed to reach sales of 30 trillion won as early as 2027, by directly handling its global sales through subsidiary Celltrion Healthcare.

The company plans to develop over 20 second-generation biosimilars including immuno-oncology treatments in Songdo.

Some 16 trillion won will be used to secure novel drugs with new healing effects. Another 5 trillion won will be invested for expanding the factory in Songdo to have the capacity to annually produce 1 million liters of biopharmaceutical ingredients and 100 million vials of final products. The remaining 4 trillion won will be used for Celltrion’s global logistics network and startup support funds.

As for global logistics, Seo said Celltrion will directly sell its products in Europe by 2019, in Asia and South America by 2020, and in US and Canada by 2021.

As for its business arm Celltrion Pharmaceutical, 5 trillion won will be injected to operate some 50 pipelines of drugs and 4 trillion won to developing novel chemical drugs through license-ins and in-house research. The remaining 1 trillion won from the budget will be used to expand its plants to annually produce 10 billion tablets.

The platform business U-Healthcare will focus 4 trillion won on developing a medical big data service which will tie the process of patient consultation and diagnosis to drug sales, enabling bio e-commerce. While 6 trillion won will go to developing and manufacturing new diagnostic medical devices that will collect medical data for precision diagnosis. 

To realize this business plan, Celltrion will hire some 2,000 experts for research and development and some 8,000 for its expanded factories.

Other than the direct employment, Celltrion believes its plans to utilize Korean raw materials for its projects will lead to indirect job creation of more than 100,000.

By Lim Jeong-yeo (kaylalim@heraldcorp.com)