Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin inspects production readiness at Lotte Biologics' Songdo Campus Plant 1 on July 3, his first visit to the site. [Provided by Lotte Holdings]
Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin inspects production readiness at Lotte Biologics' Songdo Campus Plant 1 on July 3, his first visit to the site. [Provided by Lotte Holdings]

Lotte Group has injected another 255 billion won ($169 million) into its biopharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) business, the company's designated engine of future growth. The move underscores the holding company's financial commitment and Chairman Shin Dong-bin's determination to build the unit into a global player.

According to filings with the Financial Supervisory Service's DART system Monday, Lotte Biologics approved a 255.31 billion won rights offering on July 3 to raise facility funding. The offering covers 4.209 million new common shares at 60,658 won per share — a price set by an independent valuation firm — against a par value of 5,000 won. Existing shareholders including Lotte Holdings, Hotel Lotte and Japan's Lotte Holdings will participate in the offering. It is the seventh capital raise since Lotte Biologics was founded, bringing the group's cumulative investment in the unit to approximately 1.5 trillion won.

The timing was striking: the board voted to approve the rights offering on the same day Shin visited Plant 1 at the Songdo campus to review construction progress and order status. The simultaneous on-site inspection and capital injection decision signals how firmly the group, led by Lotte Holdings, stands behind the venture.

Shin had previously visited the Syracuse, New York, plant acquired last year from Bristol Myers Squibb. His July 3 trip to Songdo marked his first inspection of Plant 1 there, where he reviewed production readiness in person. "Biotech is a core industry that will lead the group's next leap forward," he said at the site. His eldest son, Shin Yu-yeol — head of Lotte's future growth division and chief executive of Lotte Biologics — accompanied him, reinforcing the company's strategic direction.

Plant 1 at the Songdo campus made its public debut last month at the 2026 BIO International Convention in San Diego. The facility is built around a tightly engineered vertically integrated design: media and buffer solutions are prepared on the fifth floor and flow through sealed precision piping to storage rooms on the second and third floors, then delivered on schedule to the main bioreactor hall on the third floor and the purification line on the first floor.

At the heart of the plant, the third-floor bioreactor hall houses eight 15,000-liter stainless steel bioreactors — 120,000 liters of total capacity — all fully installed. A precision scale-up line takes cell cultures from 120-liter seed bioreactors up to the 15,000-liter production tanks without deviation. To eliminate human error, the warehouse — comprising 6,030 storage cells — operates as an unmanned robotic hub driven by automated cranes and transfer systems, while a central control room monitors all critical processes and utilities around the clock through a building management system.

With the capital infusion and hardware build-out nearing completion, attention is turning to Lotte Biologics' ability to win contracts. Plant 1 was built in roughly two years — well under the three-to-four years typically required for pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities — demonstrating a clear speed advantage. The company is also pushing to achieve GMP-ready status by year-end, six months ahead of its original schedule.

Plant 1 will undergo test runs and production system validation in the second half of this year before holding an official completion ceremony in November, at which point it will enter the global CDMO market in full. That will activate a dual-site model linking the Syracuse campus — specialized in clinical-batch production and carrying a track record of FDA inspections — with Songdo as the large-scale commercial manufacturing hub. Lotte Biologics has transplanted Syracuse's quality systems directly to Songdo to build client confidence.

James Park, chief executive of Lotte Biologics, said last month that the company was concentrating its efforts on "making one or two major contract wins with global big pharma visible by year-end," adding that it aimed to break into the top 10 global CDMOs "on the strength of an integrated production platform combining speed, quality and manufacturing flexibility."


silverpaper@heraldcorp.com