Joinn Biologics Acquires Lonza's Guangzhou Facility to Expand Asia-Pacific Presence
San Francisco-based CDMO Joinn Biologics has completed the acquisition of Lonza's 183,000 sq. ft (17,000 m2) manufacturing plant in Guangzhou, as the company looks to increase its foothold in China's Greater Bay Area and enhance its service offerings across the Asia-Pacific region.
The facility is equipped with advanced modular and digital production workshops, enabling both small-batch and large-scale biologics manufacturing, which the company plans to utilize to provide comprehensive services - including cell line production, process development, and formulation production.
The following article originally appeared in Fierce Pharma.
With the purchase of a former Lonza biologics plant now in the books, San Francisco-based CDMO Joinn Biologics is expanding from one Bay Area to another.
Over the weekend, Joinn announced (Chinese) that it has completed its acquisition of Lonza’s 183,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Guangzhou, China. Joinn expects the move to help it build out its presence in China’s Greater Bay Area, comprising Guangdong province (where the capital city of Guangzhou is located), Hong Kong and Macau.
The transaction follows Lonza’s decision to shutter the facility—which it bought from GE HealthCare in 2018 and opened in 2021—last January.
In the latest announcement from Joinn, the financial terms of the plant acquisition were not disclosed. A Lonza spokesperson confirmed the sale over email but would not comment on the deal's value.
The move forms part of Joinn's effort to establish a beachhead in the Greater Bay Area, which the CDMO figures will help it serve the entire Asia-Pacific market, the company said in its press release.
The Guangzhou facility comes equipped with a modular and digital production workshop boasting two 1,000-liter and two 2,000-liter disposable raw liquid production lines, Joinn noted. The site also houses preparation filling lines for various dosage forms, plus quality control labs and pilot production facilities.
Joinn will use the plant to offer end-to-end services ranging from cell line production and process development to pilot and formulation production, the CDMO said. The company noted that the facility is kitted out for small-batch manufacturing and large-scale commercial output.
Joinn Biologics, which was founded in 2018, operates under the China-based contract research organization Joinn Laboratories, which has been in business for about three decades.
Joinn Biologics currently employs more than 500 staffers working at various facilities across China and the U.S. In the U.S., Joinn says it has built multiple 1,000-liter, 500-liter and 200-liter production workshops, while its China operations include 17 disposable large-molecule bulk liquid production lines each with batch capacity of 2,000 liters.
Early last year, Lonza revealed it would shutter the Guangzhou plant shortly after charting a similar move at its manufacturing facility in Hayward, California.
The phased site closures in California and China are expected to “reduce fixed costs across the network without impacting mid-term growth,” Lonza’s former chairman, Albert Baehny, said of the decision at the time.
Baehny stepped down from his post and was succeeded by Heineken bigwig Jean-Marc Huët in May.
With the Guangzhou plant trading hands, Lonza will continue to maintain a presence in China through facilities in Nansha, which makes small-molecule drug ingredients, and Suzhou, where the Swiss CDMO cranks out drug capsules and microbial control solutions.
Meanwhile, Lonza continues to expand its production footprint even as it mothballs various other sites. Last March, the contract manufacturing juggernaut paid $1.2 billion to acquire a sprawling Genentech biologics factory in Vacaville, California, where it plans to invest another 500 million Swiss francs (about $561 million) to expand the facility in the coming years.
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