Thanks to its strategic location and pro-business environment, Singapore has established itself as a major pharma manufacturing hub in the Asia-Pacific region. Five Big Pharma companies have stepped up their investments there as of late and either expanded existing manufacturing capabilities, or chosen the city-state as the location for a new brand of facilities.
An Attractive Location for Global Pharma
Big Pharma’s choice of Singapore as its manufacturing hub in Asia Pacific dates back several decades. The GSK predecessor Beecham first set up a chemical facility there in 1972 and international pharma companies have been steadily investing in production sites in the city-state ever since. Today, at least four out five of the world’s largest drugmakers have manufacturing operations there and Singapore exports more pharmaceutical products – about USD 369 billion in 2020 – than it imports –USD 8.92 billion in 2020.
What makes the country so attractive for global life sciences companies? Location for one. Sitting in a strategic position, Singapore is Southeast Asia’s biggest port. It has long been an important centre for trade between East and West and offers easy access to key Asian markets, including India and China.
The country is also the region’s most advanced economy. Additionally, it pursues policies aimed at attracting foreign investment such as its relatively low corporate tax and its Double Tax Agreement (DTA) framework. Within the DTA, companies that have paid taxes on income in other countries may be exempt from taxes on that income in Singapore.
Other advantages of Singapore for global pharma are its skilled workforce among which some 9,000 people are employed in the biopharmaceutical sector. The local government has also made a commitment to developing the innovation ecosystem, having spent some USD 19 billion on funding public sector research in recent years as part of its National Biomedical Science Strategy.
Over the past twelve months Big Pharma appears to have further renewed its interest in Singapore. Perhaps driven by the current US-China geopolitical environment, a new wave of biopharma investments have hit the country with five sizeable injections of cash spent on renewing existing facilities or on building new ones.
AbbVie Expands its Only Plant in Asia
At the start of last year, the Chicago-based pharma giant AbbVie spent USD 223 million on its Singapore plant in Tuas Biomedical Park, which already manufactures small molecules and biologics. The investment was aimed at expanding the biologic drug-substance capacity for AbbVie’s current portfolio as well as its emerging immunology and oncology pipeline.
This was just one of AbbVie’s many investments in its Singapore-based operations and as Azita Saleki-Gerhardt, chief operations officer, said, “the proud continuation of our decade-long partnership with the Government of Singapore.”
AbbVie has invested more than USD 740 million on its Singapore facility – the company’s only manufacturing site in Asia – over the past decade.
Upgrading One of Novartis’ Largest Manufacturing Investments
Novartis also decided to build up its manufacturing footprint in Singapore and in March, 2024 the firm broke ground on a USD 256 million plant expansion. Focused on supporting increased demand for biologics, the Swiss firm’s expanded facility is intended to “help in bolstering the biopharmaceutical manufacturing and supply chain across Asia as well as strengthen local capabilities and upskill talent in Singapore,” said Steffen Lang, president of operations at Novartis.
Present in Singapore since 1986, the company opened its first manufacturing facility there in 2002. In 2013, it set up its first biopharmaceutical production facility, which the firm claims is one of the largest manufacturing investments it has ever made.
Pfizer’s API Extension
Pfizer has been present in Singapore since 1964 and began manufacturing Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) there in 2003. Now the largest contributor to Singapore’s pharma manufacturing output, the American drugmaker invested USD 743 million in expanding its API plant.
The updated 429,000 square-foot facility in the Tuas Biomedical Park will produce APIs for Pfizer’s cancer, pain and antibiotic medicines. Among the firm’s more than 30 manufacturing sites across the globe, the upgraded site in Singapore will, according to Mike McDermott, chief global supply officer, be one of its most highly automated.
The facility has been awarded with the Singaporean accreditation for environmental sustainability, Green Mark gold certification.
A First for AstraZeneca: An ADC-Dedicated Site
Other top drugmakers are choosing Singapore as the location for new manufacturing plants. AstraZeneca laid out USD 1.5 billion last year for a Singapore plant that will exclusively produce antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), treatments that deliver cancer-killing agents directly to cancer cells.
AstraZeneca has a broad portfolio of ADCs and the site will be its first end-to-end ADC production facility in the world, fully incorporating all steps of the manufacturing process at a commercial scale.
“AstraZeneca has built an industry-leading portfolio of cancer medicines including antibody drug conjugates which have shown enormous potential to replace traditional chemotherapy for patients across many settings, said CEO Pascal Soriot. “Singapore is one of the world’s most attractive countries for investment given its reputation for excellence in complex manufacturing, and I am excited for AstraZeneca to locate our $1.5 billion ADC manufacturing facility in the country.”
Sanofi Opens Singapore’s Only Modular Vaccine Facility
After building an innovative modular vaccine and biologics plant in its home country, France, dubbed as an Evolutive Vaccine Facility (EVF), Sanofi has put USD 590 million into a similar facility in Singapore.
Located in Tuas Biomedical Park, the plant is the first of its kind in Singapore. Designed for flexibility, the site can produce up to four vaccines or biologics simultaneously. And, according to Sanofi, it can go from producing one vaccine to another in under than two weeks. The flexible design allows for production to be scaled up or down as necessary in a much faster way than in traditional vaccine plants.
“More than just a factory, [the facility] redefines healthcare delivery with flexibility and speed, enabling us to meet the changing needs of the pipeline across multiple modalities, as well as respond with urgency to future public health challenges,” said VP of manufacturing and supply Brendan O’Callaghan.
