MilliporeSigma’s €300M Investment in South Korean Facility

• MilliporeSigma is investing €300 million in a new production center in Daejeon, South Korea. The facility will cater to biotech and pharma companies, focusing on process development, clinical research, and commercial biologics manufacturing.

MilliporeSigma, the North American life sciences business and part of Merck KGaA, is making a significant investment in South Korea. The company is investing €300 million ($326 million) into a new production center in Daejeon, where it expects to create 300 new jobs by the end of 2028. This marks MilliporeSigma’s largest investment in the Asia-Pacific region to date.

The new facility will cater to biotech and pharma companies with projects spanning process development, clinical research, and commercial biologics manufacturing for products like vaccines, cell and gene therapies, and monoclonal antibodies. The site will cover an area of 43,000 square meters (about 460,000 square feet), roughly equivalent in size to eight football fields. The completed facility will include advanced production capabilities as well as a distribution center and an automated warehouse.

“This investment is part of a multiyear program to boost production of critical drugs around the world,” the company said in a press release. Since 2020, MilliporeSigma has invested more than €2 billion in manufacturing capacity and capability expansions across Europe, China, and the U.S.

As the life sciences arm of Germany’s Merck KGaA, MilliporeSigma markets tools and tech needed for testing and production of pharmaceuticals. The company also operates a contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO). MilliporeSigma employs more than 28,000 staffers worldwide.

MilliporeSigma officially became part of Merck KGaA’s life sciences division in early 2022. The new unit, dubbed Life Sciences Services, combined MilliporeSigma’s CDMO business with Merck’s contract testing units and other operations such as marketing, sales, and R&D. The company first revealed plans to establish a Korean bioprocessing plant last May, with support from Daejeon City and Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy.