Factory use approval secured two years after ground-breaking; GMP preparation cut by six months — 'The completion ceremony will demonstrate our execution'
Some 800 employees converge on Songdo as company builds flat, bottom-up culture
'Beyond expectations to actual orders — we will expand engagement with global markets and media'
"The completion ceremony next month is not simply an occasion to announce that a factory building has been finished. It will be a ceremony that proves to the world — and to ourselves — the 'powerful execution' of Lotte Biologics: securing use approval just two years after ground-breaking and advancing GMP preparation by more than six months ahead of schedule."
Yoon Young-soo, head of communications and executive vice president at Lotte Biologics, described the significance of next month's completion ceremony for Songdo Plant 1 during an interview at Bio Japan 2026 — Asia's largest biotech trade fair — held at Pacifico Yokohama in Japan on Oct. 7.
Yoon spent 12 years at Lotte Holdings before joining Lotte Biologics two years ago and has overseen communications, safety, environment and ESG since this year. Now at the forefront of the company's push into what it calls the "Songdo era" — marked by the plant's completion and a major contract win — Yoon is directing internal and external communications at a pivotal moment.
Referring to the 10-year long-term CMO agreement with Alvotech announced at Bio Japan, Yoon said the center of gravity in the company's external messaging had shifted entirely from "expectation" to "substance."
"If the messages we had been sending to the market were mainly about future expectations and outlook, we have now entered a stage where we can directly show actual order wins and partnerships," Yoon said. "The order results secured at the Syracuse factory will have a very positive effect on winning orders for Songdo Plant 1 as well."
With the completion ceremony approaching next month, the Incheon Songdo Bio Campus is busy with preparations for full operation. As domestic employees wrap up their time at the Jamsil headquarters and temporary offices and converge on Songdo, roughly 800 staff members have now settled on the campus. Lotte Biologics has proactively established 17 shuttle bus routes connecting points across Seoul to Songdo to support employees' commutes.
Beyond the physical gathering, the area receiving the most attention is what the company calls the "chemical bonding" of its organizational culture. Employees at Lotte Biologics come from roughly 170 different previous employers. With such a diverse pool of specialists, establishing a unified way of working and forging a distinct identity became an immediate priority.
"We held bottom-up 'Way of Working' workshops where employees came together to define how they work themselves, and established internal rules from there," Yoon said.
Yoon added that the company has also institutionalized a "CEO Connect" session each quarter, where the chief executive and all executives share management issues candidly and listen to voices from the floor. "We are preserving the strengths of the traditional group culture while planting a younger, more flexible and dynamic culture that is essential for a biotech company," Yoon said.
The shift in how the company communicates for global competitiveness is also moving quickly. As the company actively recruits overseas biotech specialists, English has become a routine part of internal meetings and key communications, and management is maintaining open, non-hierarchical dialogue grounded in flat leadership.
After the Songdo factory completion, the company's external communications strategy will become considerably more assertive. Lotte Biologics plans to actively promote its "dual site" model to global markets — combining the quality credibility of the Syracuse factory, which passed a US Food and Drug Administration inspection without a single deficiency, with the large-scale production capacity of Songdo.
The company will particularly highlight three core messages: the flexibility to handle everything from 50-liter small-scale clinical batches to 15,000-liter large-scale commercial production; a one-stop antibody-drug conjugate service; and ESG management capabilities that meet global standards.
"Starting from the completion ceremony, we will transparently open up our on-site infrastructure, and from next year we will promote Lotte Biologics' technological capabilities and differentiation far more aggressively to major domestic and international media and to global prospective customers," Yoon said.
silverpaper@heraldcorp.com
