Inside Lotte Biologics' Songdo factory: 120,000-liter bioreactors, 6,030-cell warehouse unveiled

Lotte Biologics has pulled back the curtain on Plant 1 of its Songdo Bio Campus in Incheon, a facility the company says will reshape the global contract development and manufacturing organization market.

Lotte completed the plant in just two years, pushing back doubts about being a late entrant. At the 2026 BIO International Convention in San Diego, the company made its first-ever public disclosure of the facility's interior, releasing footage of the plant's core infrastructure and vertically integrated layout.

Footage screened at a press briefing and exhibition booth Wednesday showed state-of-the-art infrastructure built to meet global current Good Manufacturing Practice standards.

Plant 1 was designed around a rigorously calculated vertically integrated structure. Media and buffer solutions are prepared on the top floor — the fifth — then transferred through sealed precision piping to a Media Hold Room on the third floor and a Buffer Hold Room on the second floor for storage.

From there, the stored materials are delivered on demand to the main Bioreactor Hall on the third floor and the purification line on the first floor, maximizing process efficiency. The fourth floor houses a quality control laboratory and a Manufacturing Science and Technology zone, keeping production and quality verification operationally independent.

At the heart of the plant, the third-floor Bioreactor Hall houses eight massive stainless steel bioreactors, each with a 15,000-liter capacity, whose physical installation is now complete. Validation procedures are running continuously across the entire line as the company works to establish commercial production capability as early as possible.

The scale-up process — in which cell cultures are grown in stages — was also on display. Lotte has adopted a bioreactor system from French manufacturer Pierre Guérin, a global top-tier supplier. The system expands the original cell line from a 120-liter seed bioreactor through 600-liter and 3,000-liter intermediate stages before reaching the 15,000-liter main tank, with no deviation at any step.

In the pre- and post-viral filtration zone — the final safeguard for drug safety — engineers in cleanroom suits and caps operated touchscreen digital monitors in real time, managing minute process variables with visible precision.

The automated storage warehouse managing raw materials and supplies resembled a vast unmanned robotic depot. Steel racking divided into exactly 6,030 individual storage cells stretched to the ceiling, with unmanned cranes and automated transfer systems gliding through the aisles without human intervention — a design intended to eliminate human error from the materials handling process entirely.

The Central Control Room, where all of the plant's operational data converges, was equally striking. A large multi-display wall at the front of the room showed the flow rates and pressures of gases, steam and ultrapure water running throughout the Songdo facility, updated in real time.

A building management system terminal inside the control room displayed a caption stating that critical processes and utilities are monitored continuously to ensure GMP compliance. The terminal demonstrated Lotte's integrated digital process control capability — a single platform handling everything from order intake to quality verification.

James Park, chief executive of Lotte Biologics, said completing such advanced biomanufacturing infrastructure in just two years from groundbreaking reflected the company's execution capabilities combined with full support from the broader Lotte Group. "We will leverage this integrated production platform — which combines speed, quality and manufacturing flexibility — to become the most trusted CDMO partner for global big pharma," Park said.

Lotte Biologics plans to complete all GMP readiness preparations by year-end and formally enter the global contract manufacturing market at an official completion ceremony scheduled for November.