Park Geun-hye, the President of Korea [Courtesy of Blue House]
South Korean President Park Geun-hye on Monday vowed to foster the bio-medicine industry as a key engine of the country’s future economic growth.
"The government plans to keep strengthening its support to developing the bio-medicine industry as the core industry that spurs growth in our economy through drastic deregulation, continuous research and development as well as human resources," Park said.
She was speaking at a ground-breaking ceremony in Songdo, west of Seoul, where Samsung BioLogics Co, a pharmaceutical arm of Samsung Group, is investing $720 million in building a new production line next to its two other biologics manufacturing plants.
The county’s leading conglomerate Samsung Group got into biologics manufacturing in 2011 as a way to diversify away from its slowing mobile phone business.
When the new facility is wrapped up in 2018, Samsung's Songdo site will house three plants with a combined 360,000 liters of capacity.
Samsung BioLogics expects its annual sales will reach 2 trillion won if the third factory commences its operation.
By Alex Lee
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
