As 2025 comes to a close, what were the key developments—expansions and M&A—from CDMOs/CMOs this year? DCAT Value Chain Insights looks at which companies and moves that topped the headlines this year.

By Patricia Van Arnum, Editorial Director, DCAT, pvanarnum@dcat.org

Key moves in 2025
US-based manufacturing investments, newly announced or highlighting ongoing expansions, was a key theme in 2025 in the wake of evolving US-based tariff/trade policy, with several CDMOs noting US expansion activity. At the same time, global expansions advanced across the bio/pharmaceutical manufacturing value chain. Key highlights and updates from 2025 are outlined below.

Fill-finish and sterile manufacturing
Simtra BioPharma Solutions is moving forward with expansions in injectables manufacturing in the US. At its site in Bloomington, Indiana, Simtra added a flexible clinical line for prefilled syringes and liquid and lyophilized vials and is building a new production facility that will house three isolator commercial-scale sterile filling lines. The company also acquired a 65-acre property nearby with more than 300,000 square feet of available space for future development. Plans for this campus include the installation of at least six additional isolator filling lines. The first new line will be a highspeed isolator vial filling line equipped with three lyophilizers dedicated to highly potent molecules, such as antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and is scheduled to be operational in 2027. The company also recently added an conjugation and purification suite for ADCS at its site in Halle/Westfalen, Germany. 

Vetter, a Ravensburg, Germany-headquartered CDMO of aseptic filling and packaging, is advancing a new $285-million clinical manufacturing site in Des Plaines, Illinois. The facility is expected to be ready for media fill by the end of 2029. The $285-million investment provides additional capacity for small-batch production and includes space for warehouses, laboratories, and administrative offices. The 860,000-square-foot site has the capacity to accommodate future expansion. The new location supplements Vetter’s existing clinical network in Skokie, Illinois, and Rankweil, Austria.

To increase its US drug-product manufacturing capacity in the US, Thermo Fisher Scientific acquired Sanofi’s sterile manufacturing site in Ridgefield, New Jersey in 2025. . Thermo Fisher’s global sterile fill–finish manufacturing network, includes US sites in Greenville, North Carolina, and Plainville, Massachusetts. In 2025, Thermo Fisher added multiple new drug-product service lines, including four high-speed prefilled syringe lines at its site in Greenville, North Carolina, and one new line in Swindon, UK. That is in addition to expanding seven pharmaceutical development service lines to support sterile fill–finish at sites across Europe and the US (Ferentino, Italy, Greenville, North Carolina, Monza, Italy, and Plainville, Massachusetts).

Overall, as a company, including its core analytical instrumentation, consumables, and other life sciences businesses, Thermo Fisher announced plans in April (April 2025) to invest an additional $2 billion in the US over the next four years. The investment includes $1.5 billion in capital expenditures to enhance and expand US manufacturing operations and a $500-million investment in R&D. The company has 64 US manufacturing operations, located in 37 states, making analytical instruments, specialty diagnostics, and life sciences products as well as providing contract development and manufacturing services.

In May (May 2025), PCI Pharma Services completed its acquisition of Ajinomoto Althea, a San Diego, California-based sterile fill–finish CDMO and subsidiary of the Japanese multinational conglomerate, Ajinomoto Co. Althea provides aseptic fill–finish services at clinical and commercial scales and was part of Ajinomoto Bio-Pharma Services, a CDMO of drug substances and sterile drug-product manufacturing. Under the deal, Althea was separated from Ajinomoto Bio-Pharma Services, and all other Ajinomoto Bio-Pharma Services continue to operate globally as part of the Ajinomoto Group. The acquisition provided PCI with its first-ever North American manufacturing location for prefilled syringes and cartridges, including isolator technology for these formats, as well as high-potent manufacturing suitable for ADCs. In addition, last year (2024), PCI announced investments exceeding $365 million to support the clinical – and commercial-scale final assembly and packaging of drug-device combination products, with an emphasis on injectable formats.

Also building US capacity is Grand River Aseptic Manufacturing (GRAM), a Grand Rapids, Michigan-based CDMO of injectables, which is adding a new 150,000-square-foot syringe and cartridge filling center designed to hold up to four syringe/cartridge filling and inspection lines. The new center is adjacent to GRAM’s existing 200,000-square-foot finishing and warehouse center. It brings the company to five manufacturing facilities and more than 450,000 square feet. of production space. Building construction is expected to be completed in 2025, with new filling and inspection equipment installed in 2026.

Outside the US, Lonza is investing CHF 500 million ($547 million) in a large-scale, commercial drug-product fill–finish facility in Stein, Switzerland, scheduled to be operational in 2027.

Peptide expansions
Fueled by the blockbuster success of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonists and renewed focus in peptide-based drug development, several CDMOs/CMOs announced large-scale peptide expansions in 2025.

One of the largest came from CordenPharma, which is advancing a more than EUR 1-billion ($1.1-billion) investment in peptide development and manufacturing. The company’s expansion plans include an additional 30,000 L of solid-phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) capacity and 26,000 square meters of production area. Backed by several multi-year customer contracts with a total sales volume of more than EUR 4 billion ($4.4 billion), the record investment by the company is set to propel its Peptide Platform business beyond the EUR 1-billion ($1.1-billion) sales milestone by 2028.

In Switzerland, CordenPharma announced plans to establish a greenfield peptide manufacturing facility outside Basel located in Muttenz at Getec Park, with small- to large-scale SPPS reactor capacity for GLP-1 and non-GLP-1 peptide projects totaling more than 5,000 L. The main construction phase will take place between 2025 and 2027, with site qualification to be completed before the end of 2027, and commercial activities beginning the first half of 2028.

In its CordenPharma Colorado (US) site, the company plans to invest more than $500 million in additional large-scale peptide active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturing capacity, which includes revamping existing buildings and a greenfield construction for new production areas, with a total usable area exceeding 6,000 square meters. The expansion more than doubles existing SPPS reactor capacity by adding an additional 25,000 L of SPPS capacity, making it a total reactor capacity of more than 42,000 L by 2028. The main construction phase, which, started at the end of 2024, is anticipated for completion by end of 2027, with qualifications of the new production areas and start of commercial activities targeted between the second half 2026 and the first half 2028. The expansions will bolster the company’s existing peptide capabilities, including its Frankfurt, Germany, facility, which received GMP certification in January 2025 for early- to mid-stage clinical peptide manufacturing. 

SK pharmteco is investing $260 million to establish a five-story, 135,800-square-foot facility in Sejong, South Korea, to enhance the company’s peptide and small-molecule API manufacturing capabilities. This expansion will include eight production trains capable of producing tens of metric tons annually as well as peptide R&D facilities, cGMP kilo labs, and a cGMP pilot plant to support early-stage clinical, development to commercial production.

In January (January 2025), Polypeptide Laboratories reported on its EUR 100-million ($113 million) expansion to double SPPS capacity at its manufacturing site in Malmö, Sweden. The additional production capacity will mainly serve to fulfill a large commercial agreement. In late 2024, (December 2024), the company started production of new large-scale SPPS capacity at its manufacturing site in Braine-l’Alleud, Belgium, with the ramp-up planned throughout 2025.

Bachem, a CDMO of peptides and oligonucleotides, is advancing an expansion at its site in Bubendorf, Switzerland. The company is also planning an additional manufacturing site in Sisslerfeld in the Swiss municipality of Eiken. In Vista, California, Bachem acquired a property adjacent to its existing facility to add additional upstream and downstream capacity in the future. Bachem will transform the existing property into a production facility. Overall, in the US, Bachem plans to invest around $250 million over the years 2026 – 2030 to expand capacity in Vista and to modernize its facility in Torrance, California.

Biologics manufacturing
Biomanufacturing continues to be an active area of investment with several large-scale expansions. In September (September 2025), Fujifilm Biotechnologies opened its $3.2- billion commercial-scale cell-culture biomanufacturing site in Holly Springs, North Carolina. The first phase of the planned $3.2-billion manufacturing site opened with a capacity of 8 x 20,000-L of mammalian cell-culture bioreactors to encompass drug-product and drug-substance manufacturing while adding finished goods capabilities in 2026. The second-phase expansion (announced in 2024) will double capacity with an additional 8 x 20,000-L bioreactors for a total of 16 bioreactors. The company is also proceeding with continued investment at its site in Hillerød, Denmark. The first investment of $928 million added six 20,000-L bioreactors, effectively doubling its commercial monoclonal antibody production capacity. This new capacity became operational in November 2024. An additional $1.6-billion expansion at the site is scheduled to be operational in 2026. The company is also investing in small-to-mid-scale capacity at its sites in Billingham, the UK, and Toyama, Japan.

Lonza is investing CHF 500 million ($571 million) at its site in Vacaville, California, to increase its large-scale mammalian manufacturing capacity for commercial products and products in late-stage development. Lonza acquired the site in late 2024 from Roche’s Genentech for $1.2 billion. The site has total capacity of 332,000 L across 19 bioreactors.

Samsung Biologics launched its Bio Campus II with its first plant in Bio Campus II, and its fifth biomanufacturing facility overall, becoming operational earlier this year (April 2025) at its site in Songdo, Incheon, South Korea. By 2032, the company plans to complete construction of its second Bio Campus, which would provide the company with total capacity of 1,324,000 liters.

In 2025, Lotte Biologics moved forward with its inaugural plant at its Songdo Bio Campus in Incheon International City, South Korea, the first plant of a $3.3-billion biocampus that the company is establishing. Lotte Biologics entered the CDMO market with the acquisition of a commercial-scale biomanufacturing facility in Syracuse, New York, from Bristol-Myers Squibb in January 2023. The new facility is part of a previously announced $3.3-billion expansion plan to build three biomanufacturing plants at a new biocampus in South Korea by 2030 that will provide total production capacity of 360,000 liters, with each plant having 120,00 liters of production capacity. In January (January 2025), the company reported that the first plant at its Songdo Bio Campus, which represents an investment of $1 billion, is slated to commence full-scale commercial production by 2027.

AGC Biologics is proceeding with a new JPY 50-billion ($350-million) biomanufacturing facility in Yokohama, Japan, with GMP operations beginning in 2027. The new facility will offer support from initial process development work for early-phase projects to late-phase and commercial production. It will support mammalian expression, cell therapy, and messenger RNA (mRNA) drug products. In 2024, the company completed a new $200-million biomanufacturing building at its Copenhagen, Denmark, campus. The building doubled the site’s single-use bioreactor capacity for mammalian services and allowed it to produce 150 more batches of drug product each year.

WuXi Biologics is advancing a new facility in Singapore. Representing a $1.4-billion investment, the facility spans 13.5 hectares (135,000 square meters) in Tuas Biomedical Park to add 120,000 L of bioreactor capacity at both clinical and commercial scales. WuXi Biologics also announced construction of a new modular drug-product facility, which will become part of the company’s hub in Singapore. Construction has begun on the new modular drug product facility, and design work is underway for a planned drug-substance modular facility.

Biomanufacturing capacity is also changing hands. In a move to boost manufacturing capacity for its biosimilars portfolio, Sandoz acquired Just-Evotec Biologics EU SAS (JEB SAS), which included a continuous biomanufacturing site in Toulouse, France, in a deal worth up to $650 million ($350 million upfront and $300 million in milestone payments). JEB SAS was the EU arm of Just-Evotec Biologics, which is part of the drug-discovery and development company and CDMO, Evotec.

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