
Lonza to invest $500M+ on fill-finish facility on its home turf
Lonza has been expanding its reach across the globe, bringing sites in China and the US online this year, but now they are looking closer to home for their next major investment.
The Swiss manufacturer on Friday announced plans to construct a large-scale commercial drug fill and finish facility in the town of Stein, Switzerland. The new facility will be delivered through an investment of approximately CHF 500 million, or $519 million, and is expected to be completed in 2026. The facility will also be constructed on the same campus as Lonza’s current clinical drug product facility.
According to Lonza, this investment will enable the company to provide an end-to-end capability for commercial drug product manufacturing at a large-scale market supply, with a variety of pharmaceutical products being produced at the facility in different commercial formats.
Lonza did not confirm the exact size of the facility to Endpoints News.

“This strategic investment completes our offering in drug products and strengthens our position as a leading CDMO with an unparalleled breadth of offerings across scales and technologies,” said Lonza CEO Pierre-Alain Ruffieux, in a statement.
In an email to Endpoints News, the company said it sees strong demand for commercial fill-finish and the new facility will enable it to address this demand and offer an integrated drug supply chain solution across the entire life cycle.
Since establishing drug product development and manufacturing services in 2016, Lonza has expanded manufacturing at three sites in Switzerland including Basel, Stein and Visp, as well as a site in Guangzhou, China.
Lonza has also been on the March in other manufacturing areas as well. In March, the CDMO finished construction on their API development and manufacturing labs at a site in Nansha, China. This move was focused on extending the capabilities of high potency APIs, and expanded manufacturing space to ensure that clinical supply levels could meet demand.
Earlier this month, Lonza also expanded its facility in Bend, Oregon to manufacture small molecules and serve as the company’s center of excellence for bioavailability enhancement and inhaled delivery for its small molecules business unit.
However, Lonza is finding itself in an ever-busy home manufacturing market. Competitors have been turning to Lonza’s backyard over the past year as companies such as Cytiva, Thermo Fisher and local upstarts ten23 have all been building or expanding their sites in Switzerland over the past year.