Amidst a hail of in­vest­ments com­ing from South Ko­re­an con­glom­er­ates in­to biotech, in­clud­ing Lotte and Sam­sung, SK is look­ing to get in on the ac­tion.

SK Pharmte­co, a CD­MO and sub­sidiary of the sec­ond-largest con­glom­er­ate in South Ko­rea, is in­vest­ing $35 mil­lion to ex­pand SK’s phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in the Dublin sub­urb of Swords, Ire­land, in­clud­ing a new build­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to SK, the ex­pan­sion project will pro­vide an in­crease in the site’s man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty and ca­pa­bil­i­ties, com­ing on­line some­time in 2024.

The first phase of the project will in­clude a new man­u­fac­tur­ing build­ing, which will aim to in­crease re­ac­tor vol­ume ca­pac­i­ty. The new build­ing will al­so con­tain fil­tra­tion and dry­ing equip­ment, as­so­ci­at­ed util­i­ties and the ca­pa­bil­i­ty for ad­di­tion­al man­u­fac­tur­ing lines and tech­nolo­gies in fu­ture phas­es of the project.

The ex­pan­sion will hap­pen over two phas­es, with ad­di­tion­al fund­ing for sub­se­quent phas­es. On com­ple­tion, the ex­pan­sion will re­sult in an over­all 50% in­crease in ca­pac­i­ty at the Swords cam­pus.

“With sub­stan­tial growth in our busi­ness base, this ex­pan­sion sup­ports SK biotek Ire­land’s po­si­tion as a key con­trib­u­tor to SKPT’s EU and world­wide busi­ness,” said Joyce Fitzhar­ris, pres­i­dent of SK biotek Ire­land, in a state­ment.  The new plant will be lo­cat­ed on the foot­print of a de­com­mis­sioned pro­duc­tion build­ing on-site, with­in prox­im­i­ty to SK’s oth­er site fa­cil­i­ties.

This is the sec­ond ma­jor ex­pan­sion project SK has em­barked on. In 2020, the Swords Cam­pus com­plet­ed a $30 mil­lion re­ac­tor ca­pac­i­ty ex­pan­sion.

The cam­pus has been around for 60 years as a small mol­e­cule API man­u­fac­tur­er, pro­duc­ing on­col­o­gy and car­di­ol­o­gy treat­ments.

This comes at a time not on­ly when oth­er com­pa­nies are look­ing to build out or ex­pand on the Emer­ald Isle, but as SK is mak­ing more in­vest­ments in biotech.

Ear­li­er this year, SK said it will in­vest $350 mil­lion in­to the Cen­ter for Break­through Med­i­cines, with plans to add 2,000 em­ploy­ees as part of a re­dux at the CD­MO’s King of Prus­sia, PA, fa­cil­i­ty.

The EMA is putting EU member states on alert over the shortage of two drugs that counter heart attacks due to an uptick in demand.

On Friday, the EMA sent out a warning that two Boehringer Ingelheim drugs are experiencing a shortage: Actilyse and Metalyse. The drugs are used as emergency treatments for adults experiencing acute myocardial infarction, or a heart attack, by dissolving blood clots that have formed in the blood vessels.

Fujifilm’s CDMO arm, Fujifilm Diosynth, has been on a roll this month as the company has recently broken ground on a major project in Europe and it appears to be keeping up the momentum.

Fujifilm Diosynth announced that it has kicked off an expansion project for its microbial manufacturing facility at its campus in the town of Billingham, UK, in the northeast of England.

The 20,000 square-foot, £400 million ($435 million) expansion will add clean rooms, purification suites and a packing area along with more space for the manufacturing itself.

Back in April, Amgen said it was encouraged by the solicitor general’s anticipated review of its Supreme Court petition to rehear a Repatha patent case. They’re likely much less optimistic about the outcome now.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a recent 27-page brief that Amgen’s arguments “lack merit and further review is not warranted.”

The case traces back to a suit filed in 2014 against Sanofi and Regeneron’s Praluent, which ended up beating Amgen’s PCSK9 blockbuster Repatha to market by a month just a year later.