793,000 L vs 784,000 L: Lonza and Samsung Biologics Have Almost the Same Capacity and Almost Opposite Maps

Lonza runs 484,000 L in the US, 219,000 L in Europe and 90,000 L in Singapore — 793,000 L total, roughly two-thirds in America. Samsung Biologics has 784,000 L across Plants 1-5 in Songdo, over 90% in Korea. A 1.1% difference in volume, mirrored geopolitical exposure, and two very different ways to be 'the largest'.

At its 2026 Capital Markets Day, Lonza laid out the numbers behind its position in large-scale mammalian capacity: 484,000 L of US mammalian capacity, 219,000 L across European sites and 90,000 L in Singapore, for 793,000 L globally. The Vacaville, California site acquired from Roche in 2024 for USD 1.2B accounts for 332,000 L on its own — 42% of the group total — and is marketed as world-scale biologics capacity. Lonza also claims the largest biologics CDMO network in the US and argues that key operating areas such as mammalian will remain under-supplied over the long term.

Set that against Samsung Biologics. Bio Campus I in Songdo — Plants 1 through 4 — totals 605,000 L and can legitimately claim to be the world's largest single biomanufacturing site. Plant 5 came online in 2026, adding 180,000 L and lifting total antibody capacity to 784,000 L. Bio Campus II will add Plants 6, 7 and 8 by 2032 for a further 720,000 L. Separately, the company closed its acquisition of GSK's Rockville, Maryland facility in 2026 — two cGMP plants with 60,000 L of drug substance capacity combined — giving it its first US manufacturing footprint.

A 9,000-litre gap — and the gap is the map

Side by side: 793,000 L versus 784,000 L, a difference of 9,000 L, or 1.1%. In any argument about who is number one, that gap is noise. The meaningful gap is structural: Lonza is 61% US, 28% Europe and 11% Singapore, with the US and Europe together near 89%. Samsung is 92% Korea and 7.7% US.

Even counting all of Bio Campus II from 2032 (784,000 + 720,000 = 1,504,000 L, plus 60,000 L at Rockville, roughly 1.56 million L), Samsung's Korean share stays around 92%. In other words, over a decade Samsung can double Lonza's volume without changing its geographic concentration at all.

That difference means the same phrase — 'the largest globally' — carries a completely different risk stack. First, policy exposure: with 61% of capacity on US soil, Lonza is arguably a beneficiary of any 'made in America' supply narrative, while Samsung's 92% Korean base makes transpacific logistics, tariffs and rules of origin hard constraints; a US customer that needs US manufacturing has only those 60,000 Rockville litres to work with. Second, single-campus concentration: Samsung's five Songdo plants sit in one park, so any regional shock — power, labour, industrial action — hits nine-tenths of capacity directly. That is precisely why the two rounds of union disputes in May and October 2026 rattled global customers. Lonza at least spans three continents; Gordon Bates, head of integrated biologics, acknowledges a 'regional imbalance' with nearly two-thirds of capacity in the US, but stresses that the US is the world's largest pharmaceutical market.

'We are not in a capacity race' — but the race has moved

CEO Wolfgang Wienand insists Lonza is not in a capacity race with anyone. On the same trip, Renzo Cicillini, who heads the Visp site, was blunter: 'We are still the biggest CDMO worldwide but Samsung, WuXi — and the others — are not sleeping. We need to be always one step further than the others.'

Looking at the past year, the real competitive axes are no longer litres but three finer things. First, the ADC toolbox: in June 2026 Lonza announced an expansion of payload-linker capacity at Visp for highly potent APIs and ADCs, with commercial-scale capability expected in 2028, built around an integrated-biologics logic that links development, drug substance and drug product across the lifecycle. Second, drug product: Samsung plans to launch ADC drug product in 2027, closing the loop from substance to finished vial and going straight at Lonza and WuXi XDC. Third, modality coverage: Samsung entered ADC CDMO in 2025 and is adding peptides through its PolyPeptide tender offer, already accepted by 87.92% of shareholders, picking up six manufacturing sites across Europe, India and the US in one move.

There is an irony worth remembering here: Lonza sold its peptides business and Belgian operations to PolyPeptide in 2016. Ten years later that capability returns to a major competitor through Samsung's acquisition — and peptides happen to be among the tightest capacity in the GLP-1 era.

The third path: ESTEVE's mutual regional parity

On 21 October, Spain's ESTEVE CDMO announced a new Shaoxing base: more than USD 80M invested, three manufacturing workshops, 250 m3 of reaction volume in phase one with over 150 m3 reserved and potential to exceed 400 m3, focused on spray drying and highly potent APIs, with automation and digitalisation designed in from the start. In parallel, its Morton Grove, Illinois site has drawn cumulative investment of USD 33M — a USD 17.5M addition in September 2026 bringing two new 500-gallon reactors, better containment for early development and warehouse upgrades.

This is the third answer, the one mid-sized players give: don't pick a side, build small plants on both. Shaoxing's 250 m3 is not in the same league as Vacaville's 332,000 L, but what it sells is a compliance option — the same molecule can have an amplification and supply path in China and another in North America, addressing origin, tariff and audit requirements. For a customer base of small biotechs and specialty pharma, that regional symmetry is often worth more than absolute scale.

Cell therapy shows a different direction entirely. On 6 October, Catalent joined Ori Biotech's Preferred Partner Network, with its Princeton, New Jersey site becoming a centre of excellence for the IRO platform supporting autologous cell therapy process development and GMP manufacturing. Closed, automated workflows address batch consistency and scalability rather than litres — which is why the word 'capacity' barely applies in CGT.

Editorial: three definitions to check before reading any capacity number

One: mammalian cell-culture litres are not reaction volume in cubic metres. Lonza and Samsung count biologics drug substance in litres; ESTEVE and WuXi count small-molecule reactor volume in m3. They cannot be added or compared, which is where most capacity league tables go wrong. Two: drug substance is not drug product. Samsung's 2027 ADC drug-product launch is the real starting point for end-to-end; until then there is a structural gap versus Lonza's integrated biologics offering. Three: GMP release is not full utilisation. Samsung's Plant 5 and Rockville are both online and sub-scale, which points to margin pressure over the next four to eight quarters rather than revenue elasticity today.

For CXDMO customers and investors, there are two practical implications. First, site selection is shifting from lowest cost to acceptable geopolitical exposure: one molecule may need two regulatory filings and two supply agreements, raising supplier-management cost while lowering the probability of interruption. Second, capacity announcements and depreciation typically sit 6 to 18 months apart — read fixed assets and construction in progress before reading backlog, because where the money went tells you what the order book will cost.

Which brings us back to that 1.1% gap. In 2026, headline capacity among leading CDMOs has converged; outcomes are decided by three things instead — where the capacity sits on the map, how complete the modality coverage is, and whether the company can carry a molecule from development all the way to finished product. Lonza bets on integration plus a US-European dual core, Samsung on a Korean mega-campus plus modality fill-in, ESTEVE on regional parity. All three work, provided the customer's supply-chain strategy agrees.