Samsung Group, the nation’s top conglomerate, is expected to make aggressive investments in its mainstay businesses this year, industry sources said on Sunday, adding its increased investments will be put on new growth engines.
The group’s investments are poised to top 50 trillion won ($47.4 billion) this year, up from 49 trillion won last year.
Samsung Electronics, the flagship company of the group, and Samsung Everland, the group’s de facto holding company, will each spend 84.7 billion won to buy new shares issued by Samsung Biologics next month, sources said.
Late last month, Samsung Electronics and Samsung Everland said they will invest a total of 600 billion won in the group’s biopharmaceutical manufacturing unit by August.
Samsung Biologics was established in April 2011 as part of Samsung’s plan to seek a new growth engine by diversifying its businesses outside its mainstay consumer electronics and mobile devices.
Half of the total investment will be spent on the second plant of Samsung Biologics, currently under construction. The second plant, to be equipped with 10 bioreactors with 15,000-liter working volumes, is scheduled to be completed by 2015. The company’s first plant has two bioreactors with volumes of 15,000 liters.
A bioreactor is a device or system that supports a biologically active environment and are used to grow cells.
“We have expedited the groundbreaking date for the second plant from the initial 2015 as market demand for biologics has been growing at a faster pace,” said an official at Samsung Biologics. Last year, Samsung Biologics signed deals with Basel-based Swiss Loch Group and Bristol-Myers Squibb of the U.S.
Additionally, Samsung Display, a flat-panel unit of Samsung Electronics, is mulling expanding its plant in Asan, 95 km south of Seoul, to produce organic light-emitting diode, or OLED, panels. (Yonhap News)
