Inside Pharma’s Push for More Resilient Supply Chains

It’s no secret that pharmaceutical companies today are rethinking global supply networks. As the industry faces global disruptions and trade friction, supply chain resiliency and security are top of mind. Recent supply chain disruptions have shown how localized crises, regulatory bottlenecks or political instability can upend concentrated production and expose downstream markets to drug shortages. As a result, the geography of drug manufacturing has become central to national security discussions, accelerating efforts to build domestic capacity and trusted regional supply corridors.

Supply chain resiliency is the industry’s shift away from single points of failure to mitigate risk. Two of the key ways companies are actively achieving this are onshoring and dual-sourcing.

Top global pharmaceutical companies are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into U.S. manufacturing, R&D and supply chain infrastructure to localize production and bolster domestic capacity. Landmark investments include:

• AstraZeneca: Announced a $50 billion commitment to the U.S. by 2030.
• Johnson & Johnson: Pledged over $55 billion in U.S. operations over a four-year period.
• Novartis: Finalized plans for a $23 billion investment focusing on biologics and RNA production, heavily concentrated in North Carolina.
• Eli Lilly: Invested over $9.5 billion in recent years to expand infrastructure across Indiana, Wisconsin and Virginia.
• AbbVie: Building a new $1.4 billion pharmaceutical campus in Durham, North Carolina.

But the U.S. is not the only place companies are investing in to onshore operations. In January of 2026, AstraZeneca announced a $15 billion investment in China through 2030 to expand medicines manufacturing and R&D. This investment aims to leverage China’s scientific expertise, advanced manufacturing, and China-UK healthcare ecosystem collaborations to deliver treatments to patients across China and globally.

In addition to onshoring, dual sourcing or multiple sourcing strategies have also become standard practice as companies manage global supply chain risk through greater diversification, visibility and collaboration. These tactics reduce dependency on a single supplier while also supporting cost competitiveness.

Contract Pharma recently met with James Choi, EVP, Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Sales Support, Samsung Biologics, and Toshi Iida, Board Director, General Manager, Life Sciences Headquarters, FUJIFILM Corporation & Chairman, FUJIFILM Biotechnologies, at BIO 2026 in San Diego where we discussed the companies’ recent investments, their perspectives on supply chain resilience, dual sourcing, onshoring and more.

Samsung Biologics’ Acquisition in Rockville Maryland

In March 2026, Samsung Biologics acquired a manufacturing facility in Rockville, Maryland from GSK, establishing the company’s first manufacturing presence in the United States.

Choi characterizes the acquisition as “a pivotal moment for Samsung Biologics.” He explains it’s “not just a facilities transaction, but the physical foundation for our long-term U.S. manufacturing strategy.”

The company conducted a thorough, multi-year search across the U.S. before identifying Rockville as the right fit. According to Choi, it checked every box: fully operational, GMP-certified, in a rapidly expanding biopharma corridor, proximate to existing and potential customers, and backed by a talented workforce of more than 500 employees who joined with the site.

The Rockville site comprises two cGMP manufacturing plants with a combined 60,000-liter drug substance capacity, supporting both clinical and commercial biologics production across multiple manufacturing scales. With this addition, Samsung Biologics’ total global manufacturing capacity increases to 845,000 liters.

Why now? Choi says the timing reflected a convergence of factors: “Our clients were telling us – with increasing urgency – that they wanted a U.S. manufacturing node within our network. Not as a replacement for Songdo, but as a complement. The geopolitical landscape, shifting trade policies, and the growing emphasis on supply chain resilience accelerated those conversations. When the Rockville opportunity presented itself, we moved decisively.”

Choi emphasizes, “This is not a satellite office—it is a fully integrated manufacturing hub that operates under the same ExellenS standardized platform as our Songdo facilities.”

In practical terms: When clients’ processes are established at Samsung Biologics’ Songdo site, it can transfer that process to Rockville—or to any plant in its network—with dramatically reduced requalification burden. Processes behave predictably across sites, through standardized training and equivalent systems.

The company can also execute an accelerated dual-site tech transfer. This saves clients months of timeline and significant raw material costs. For a U.S.-based biotech or pharma company, having a Rockville site that operates under the same platform as its Korean facilities means they can start development in Songdo and transition seamlessly to Rockville for commercial supply—or run dual-sourcing across both sites from day one of launch.

Furthermore, Samsung Biologics is investing in cross-training between Songdo and Rockville teams, harmonizing quality systems, and aligning its digital infrastructure so that Rockville operates as a seamless extension of the company’s global network – not a standalone site.

Fujifilm Biotechnologies’ Expansion in the UK

In February 2026, Fujifilm Biotechnologies opened an expanded site in Teesside, UK. The £400 million expansion included the opening of a single-use biopharmaceutical CDMO facility, located at the existing FUJIFILM Biotechnologies site. In total, the UK expansion introduces 2,000 L and 5,000 L single-use bioreactors with a total capacity up to 19,000 L to provide small- and mid-scale antibody manufacturing, with the  flexibility to expand as needed.

In parallel, the opening of the Bioprocess Innovation Centre UK, provides lab services for both high-throughput, and continuous process development capabilities, and will operate as a global center of excellence for biomanufacturing and process development. The 102,200 sq. ft. facility doubles the campus’ existing lab footprint and complements the sites’ expanded GMP manufacturing capabilities. 


“While some of our competitors are still acquiring existing sites from pharma companies, we invest in brand new facilities,” says Toshi Iida. “The benefit to that is we can design for one network.”

Iida explains, Fujifilm Biotechnologies’ Denmark and Holly Springs sites and its UK and Japan facilities are harmonized. “Exactly the same equipment; the same system. Even the people can exchange, sharing their knowledge and expertise with each other,” he says. “From the quality system to the operating system and automation system.”

KojoX is the operating system that ties it together with harmonized platforms, processes, equipment, and quality systems, Iida explains. “That means a partner can scale up and out with us from early process development all the way through commercialization, without the friction of redesigning processes or slow tech transfer at each transition. We are not site by site—we are one interconnected network that grows smarter with every batch.”

How Clients are Rethinking Risk, Resilience and Regional Diversification

While Samsung Biologics and Fujifilm Biotechnologies have somewhat different strengths, scale profiles and service emphases, both CDMOs emphasized interconnectivity and harmonization between sites and identified the geopolitical landscape, shifting trade policies and the growing emphasis on supply chain resilience as factors that accelerated their recent investment decisions.

“Over the last two years, clients are thinking more and more about how to establish more resilient supply chains, and onshoring manufacturing is the way they are moving forward,” says Iida. “Clients are prioritizing regional coverage, regulatory alignment and speed of tech transfer.”

“CDMOs by nature are an extension of their own supply chain, so a lot of big pharmaceutical companies will have their internal capacity, but they’ll always want a secondary supply,” adds Choi. “The more diversified in terms of scale and location, the better.”

Choi also notes that while the current administration in the U.S. has made a strong push for manufacturing in the country in order to ensure a robust U.S. supply chain, more than half of Samsung Biologics’ clients are U.S. based, “so it just made a lot of sense for us to invest there.”

Iida makes a similar point. He says, “the geopolitical and tariff situations pushed pharma companies a little bit, but in general, there is a natural trend to get supply chains as close as possible to the patient.”

In other words, geopolitical factors and incentives may have accelerated the trend of onshoring, but the push toward regional diversification is also logical and somewhat inevitable.

As for dual sourcing, some skeptics have wondered if it puts the industry at risk of overcorrecting and potentially sacrificing efficiency for perceived security, but Choi and Iida strongly disagree.

Choi acknowledges that dual sourcing is “certainly an investment,” however, he argues, “once it’s done, you now have a much more robust and flexible supply chain.”

“Not all your eggs are in one basket,” he explains. “Pharma companies and clients don’t want to tie up all their capital in a factory primarily designed to make one or two products, so they want the flexibility of working with a seasoned CDMO like Samsung Biologics that has variable capacity.”

“If dual sourcing means running two separate, disconnected manufacturing strategies, the cost and complexity can outweigh the benefit,” Iida says. “The right balance is resilience without fragmentation. That means selecting partners with genuinely networked infrastructure—not just multiple buildings.”

Future Outlook

Looking ahead five to ten years, Iida predicts, “Regional manufacturing will grow, driven by geopolitics. Diversification will become standard practice. And specialization—in modalities like cell therapy, gene therapy, ADCs, mRNA and LNP—will accelerate as the pipeline matures.”

“The fundamentals of biologics outsourcing remain strong,” says Choi. “Demographics are driving demand. Pipelines are more diverse and technically complex. The bar for manufacturing excellence keeps rising. Companies that can execute consistently—on quality, on timelines, with flexibility, and with a global footprint—will be the partners that thrive.”