Local pharmaceutical companies are expanding their manufacturing facilities to meet the rising demand for drugs amid the resurgence of Covid-19.

ST Pharm, a subsidiary of Dong-A ST, said Thursday it would double the production facility for the raw materials of oligonucleotide drugs in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province. Investing 30.7 billion won ($25.8 million) in the additional facility, the company will begin the expansion in September and complete the addition in December 2021.

If the company starts to operate the new facility in 2022, ST Pharm’s output of raw materials for oligonucleotide will double to 1,600kg from the current 800kg.

The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic prompted the company to add the production line because oligonucleotide drugs are used for making immunity-boosting adjuvant therapy for a Covid-19 vaccine candidate. ST Pharm estimated that 1 billion doses of immunity-boosting adjuvant treatment would require 3 tons of raw materials for oligonucleotide drugs.

An official at ST Pharm said the company was also mulling to construct a new factory for oligonucleotide raw materials in its manufacturing site in Ansan.

Kukje Pharma also said on Wednesday that it has completed redoubling the production line for Korean Filter (KF) masks.

Kukje will start running the added facility in September. The company sold 11 billion won worth of masks in the first half of this year amid the Covid-19 crisis. The company said it also planned to build an additional plant as the demand for masks continues to surge.

Bioneer, which drew attention with its Covid-19 diagnostic kit, is also enlarging the capacity to export more test kits and diagnostic agents.

In May, the company said in a public filing that it would invest 5.8 billion won to build a new plant in Daedeok-gu, Daejeon, where the company’s headquarters and research facilities are located.

Earlier this month, Bioneer agreed to supply 6.7 billion won worth of Covid-19 diagnostic kits and agents to Saudi Arabia, and 5.6 billion won worth of related products to Columbia.

Bioneer develops Covid-19 test kits and related products based on reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The company said it would manufacture more nucleic acid extraction reagents used in Covid-19 diagnostic kits with the new plant. However, the groundbreaking was slightly delayed from the initial schedule of August, the company said.

An official at Bioneer said the construction was expected to end by the fourth quarter this year. “The company is making 500,000 test kits in a week. An added production capacity will boost the output by 10 folds,” he said.

SK Biosciencey and Samsung BioLogics also said that they would build a massive plant to manufacture more Covid-19 vaccine and treatment candidates for their contract manufacturing organization (CMO) and contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) deals, respectively.

Local drugmakers are likely to keep increasing their supply to meet the rising demand amid Covid-19, observers said.

kch@docdocdoc.co.kr

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