At last week’s Capital Markets Day 2026, Lonza executives made the case that the contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) is well-positioned to capitalize on large-scale mammalian demand. The Swiss-headquartered CDMO’s total U.S. mammalian capacity is 484,000L, European sites have a combined 219,000L, and a Singapore site provides 90,000L in total capacity, according to the company.

In the U.S., Lonza claims it operates the largest biologics CDMO network and that capacity in key operating areas — such as mammalian — should remain under-supplied over the long term. Gordon Bates, Lonza’s head of integrated biologics, acknowledged the company’s “regional imbalance” with nearly two-thirds of its overall capacity based in the U.S., but emphasized its importance as the world’s largest pharmaceutical market.

Lonza’s Vacaville, California facility, acquired from Roche for $1.2 billion in 2024, is the crown jewel of the company’s biologics growth strategy. Vacaville, with total bioreactor capacity of 332,000L, is being promoted as having “world-scale” biologics capacity. Still, CEO Wolfgang Wienand insists Lonza is “not in a capacity race” with any other company.

However, in terms of high-volume mammalian production, South Korea-based CDMO Samsung Biologics is perhaps the biggest potential threat to Lonza. Samsung’s Bio Campus I in Songdo, Incheon, which includes Plants 1 through 4, has a combined total capacity of 605,000L and can legitimately make the claim of being the world’s largest biomanufacturing site.

Last year, Plant 5 went online — Samsung’s first facility at its Bio Campus II site in Songdo — adding 180,000L of capacity and bringing the CDMO’s total antibody production capacity to 784,000L. Bio Campus II, which will also include Plants 6, 7, and 8, is slated for completion by 2032 with total capacity of 720,000L.

ADCs and other advanced modalities

Samsung entered the antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) CDMO market in 2025 with the opening of a dedicated facility in Songdo. The company is also targeting the ADC drug product market with a planned launch in 2027, offering an end‑to‑end service from drug substance to finished product. The move positions Samsung to compete directly with Lonza and WuXi XDC, both of which are also expanding their respective capacities.

“We are still the biggest CDMO worldwide but Samsung, WuXi — and the others — are not sleeping,” said Renzo Cicillini, head of Lonza’s Visp, Switzerland site, during a tour earlier this month of its ADC infrastructure. “We need to be always one step further than the others.”

While capacity is critical for Lonza, Wienand contends the company’s strong competitive positioning extends beyond scale to its integrated biologics offering, connecting development, drug substance, and drug product capabilities across the entire lifecycle for increasingly complex biologics such as ADCs.

Lonza has been able to bring commercial ADCs to the market, according to Wienand, who told analysts at last week’s Capital Markets Day that the “ADC toolbox” the company is building “comprises everything that it takes to develop and manufacture.” Wienand sees Lonza’s commercial capacity in the space as “one of the few CDMOs in the world” and expects to continue to grow its business “in this very attractive modality.”  

Samsung’s planned acquisition of Swiss-headquartered CDMO PolyPeptide Group will expand its capabilities beyond antibodies and ADCs to include peptide therapeutics, adding PolyPeptide’s six manufacturing facilities in Europe, India, and the U.S. It’s worth noting that Lonza in 2016 sold its peptides business and operations in Belgium to PolyPeptide.

While Samsung’s South Korean network includes Bio Campus I, Bio Campus II, and an ADC plant in Songdo, earlier this year the company completed the acquisition of a GSK facility in Rockville, Maryland, establishing its first U.S. manufacturing footprint. The Rockville site includes two cGMP plants with a combined 60,000L of drug substance capacity supporting clinical and commercial biologics production across multiple scales.

Samsung is evaluating opportunities to optimize the Rockville site for a broader range of customer requirements. Together with its Songdo operations, the company contends it has the geographic manufacturing presence to accommodate U.S. and global demand.

“As global pharmaceutical pipelines become more diverse and supply requirements increasingly complex, the ability to execute consistently across manufacturing programs is ever more important,” Samsung Biologics CEO John Rim said in a statement. “We are strategically expanding our manufacturing capacity, multi-modality capabilities, and global operations to address these evolving needs.”

Analysts like Lonza’s competitive positioning

William Blair analysts believe Lonza is the only CDMO with available large-scale U.S. mammalian capacity and one of only a few contract manufacturers with the global scale necessary to support customers across locations, modalities, and stage of development.

In terms of differentiation, the analysts in a note last week pointed to Lonza’s broad geographic footprint that includes 13 large manufacturing sites across three continents, offering proximity to customers and exposure to regions with under-supplied or balanced capacity.

“We believe Lonza’s combination of established commercial manufacturing relationships, broad scale and geographic coverage, and expanding drug product capabilities positions it to benefit from sustained mammalian demand while increasing the value captured per customer relationship,” the analysts wrote.

What’s clear is the rivalry between Lonza and Samsung is just starting to heat up between these two pure-play CDMOs. It’s a battle increasingly focused on capacity, scale, and regionalization. The good news for both companies is that in the biologics space, there is healthy demand for mammalian capacity as well as advanced modalities such as ADCs.