Rancho Cordova, California-headquartered SK pharmteco will spend more than $200 million over five years on its U.S. development and manufacturing infrastructure to expand the company’s small molecule and peptide capabilities.

The contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) said its domestic investment plan will include new laboratories to accelerate early- through late-stage development for small molecules and peptides, GMP kilo-scale peptide capacity plus added liquid chromatography, and new manufacturing suites and boosted GMP capacity to meet growing demand for small-molecule active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).

While SK pharmteco didn’t identify the U.S. sites that are part of the capital expenditure, the CDMO plans to invest “heavily” in utility upgrades, logistics, and digitization, as well as green technology to “ensure sustainable, high-efficiency operations.” The new GMP kilo-scale capacity is slated to be operational in late 2026 with advanced liquid chromatography capabilities, according to the announcement.

“This commitment to our domestic operations marks a transformative milestone for SK pharmteco,” CEO Joerg Ahlgrimm said in a statement. “By expanding our domestic capabilities across small molecules and peptides, we are directly addressing unprecedented demand from our broad customer base.”

SK pharmteco’s $200 million-plus investment is expected to create approximately 100 long-term, high-skilled jobs in the U.S. and strengthen its domestic API, peptide, and advanced therapy capabilities.

However, the CDMO’s biggest investment in recent years was a $260 million commitment in 2024 to build a new facility in Sejong, South Korea in an expansion of global small molecule and peptide production. The 135,800-square-foot facility, the company’s fifth plant in South Korea, is scheduled to begin operations in late 2026 and will feature eight production trains with an estimated output of tens of metric tons annually.

Global growth strategy

Created in 2019, SK pharmteco is a subsidiary of SK Inc., the strategic investment company for SK Group, one of South Korea’s largest conglomerates. A CDMO with manufacturing sites, R&D facilities, and analytical laboratories in the U.S., Europe, and South Korea, SK pharmteco continues to expand capacity as part of a “global strategy to secure a resilient supply chain” and better support its biopharmaceutical customers.

In August, the company completed two facility expansions at its Swords, Ireland manufacturing campus, adding commercial-scale small molecule API capacity and a kilo-scale facility for highly potent APIs (HPAPIs) and antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) payloads.

The new kilo-scale GMP HPAPI and ADC payload facility is designed to handle compounds with occupational exposure limits as low as 10 ng/m³, while supporting batch sizes of 0.5 to 1.5 kilograms, and includes glass reactors with capacity up to 30 liters, rigid and flexible isolators, high-pressure chromatography, as well as tray drying and lyophilization.

Earlier this year, SK pharmteco announced a $100 million investment to expand its viral vector capabilities while reaffirming its three-business-unit strategy across small molecules, peptides, and viral vectors. The funding will support strategic initiatives across its gene therapy network, including sites in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and Corbeil-Essonnes, France.

In October 2025, SK pharmteco announced a $6.1 million investment in its Rancho Cordova, California facility to expand and equip a new lab and GMP-kilo-scale facility for solid-phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) and purification to boost domestic production of APIs. At the time, Ahlgrimm said the CDMO was expanding its capacity to meet the increasing demand for high-quality, secure U.S. manufacturing.

“While many companies are now committing to expanding capacity in the U.S., CDMOs like SK pharmteco remain a vital part of the supply chain, both now and in the future,” according to Ahlgrimm.

Around the same time, the company completed GMP qualification of its Corbeil-Essonnes facility, enabling late-stage and commercial-scale viral vector manufacturing at the French site. Also in 2025, SK pharmteco opened a new GMP-compliant plasmid suite at its King of Prussia facility.

The Pennsylvania site includes four dedicated plasmid manufacturing suites that support three different grade levels, enabling production across a range of therapeutic applications. The 300,000-square-foot facility also houses two aseptic fill-finish operations and offers integrated analytical and development services.