As Celltrion looks to ward off potential import tariffs, the South Korean company’s odds of acquiring a large-scale drug substance plant in the U.S. have gone up considerably.
Celltrion is now the preferred bidder on the facility, which is up for sale by an undisclosed global pharma, Reuters reports, citing comments from Celltrion’s CEO, Seo Jung-Jin, at a briefing event this week.
Celltrion plans to invest 700 billion Korean won (roughly $504 million) in the acquisition and operation of the facility, Seo said. The CEO added that Celltrion could invest another 300 billion won to 700 billion won in the plant depending on the U.S.’ import tariff policies, according to Reuters.
The identity of the drugmaker selling the plant, and the facility’s location, have not been disclosed. Celltrion expects to ink the final transaction in early October, Reuters said.
Celltrion did not respond to Fierce Pharma’s request for comment on the matter by publication time. The company did, however, lay out a detailed tariff mitigation strategy in a letter to shareholders Wednesday, which also included more color around the prospective plant purchase.
In its notice, Celltrion referred to the biologics plant acquisition as “a fundamental solution to the tariff issue.”
The plant was described in the letter as a large-scale cGMP-certified facility focused on production of drug substances. It is based at “a major pharmaceutical cluster that has been manufacturing key biologics—such as cancer and autoimmune disease treatments—for several years,” the company noted.
Once the purchase is complete and Celltrion is able to produce its core U.S. products locally, the company says it expects to “completely eliminate the tariff risk associated with these products.”
The company also affirmed plans to expand the facility “in line with U.S. sales trends and product launch schedules.” Once those projects have wrapped, Celltrion said it expects to be able to handle the entire drug production cycle at the facility, from drug substance and drug product manufacturing through packaging and distribution.
The company noted that the plant also presents an immediate path to added revenue through an existing contract manufacturing agreement for the unnamed seller’s biologics that is currently occupying roughly 50% of the site’s production capacity. Celltrion would inherit that contract should the plant sale go through.
Meanwhile, as a short-term measure to defend against pharmaceutical import tariffs, Celltrion said it has completed stockpiling two years’ worth of inventory within the U.S. In the midterm, Celltrion will expand its work with domestic contract manufacturers to help produce U.S.-bound products in-country. The planned plant purchase defines the Korean biopharma’s long-term tariff mitigation strategy.
Celltrion’s bread-and-butter business is biosimilars, with the company marketing a range of biologic copycats in the U.S. that reference drugs like Johnson & Johnson’s Remicade and Stelara, Roche’s Rituxan and AbbVie’s Humira. The company also sells the novel inflammatory bowel disease biologic Zymfentra.
Throughout 2025, drugmakers of all stripes have been hashing out mitigation strategies behind the scenes as the Trump administration has repeatedly threatened to impose pharmaceutical import tariffs, sometimes at a proposed rate as high as 200%.
After much grandstanding on the duties, pharmaceutical tariffs finally surfaced in a material way in an new trade deal between the U.S. and the EU that was announced over the weekend.
The deal includes a 15% tax on pharmaceutical products and many others entering the U.S. from Europe, though many unknowns still surround the actual implementation of the tariffs. Further, the duties aren’t expected to go live until the Trump administration announces the results of a so-called Section 232 investigation into the national security implications of pharmaceutical imports in August.