The biopharmaceutical market continued to expand in 2024 and is expected to achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 8 and 10% in the next five years1. Historically, the clinical molecule pipeline within the market has increased between 9 and 10% per annum over the last ten years2.
The biologics CDMO market continues to show positive growth, with an expected CAGR between 9 and 11% over the next five years3, as the outsourcing trend continues. The growth in CDMO capacity continues to outpace capacity in customer-owned facilities, as large and small players increasingly rely on manufacturing partners to support, complement and de-risk their journey to market. Partnering models help attract customers by enabling capital preservation, direct access to leading expertise, de-risked supply, and regulatory support.
Large pharmaceutical organizations contribute the majority of CDMO revenues due to commercial manufacturing activity. Small biotech businesses represent a higher proportion of the molecule pipeline, where outsourcing is built into business models to conserve capital resources. While funding has affected this segment in the short term, we expect this to normalize in the medium term.
Strong and continued growth is reflected across all phases of molecules in the biologics pipeline. This is matched by the increased diversity of modalities for the molecules in development, with new biologics drug types and novel indications as key growth factors.
There are specific market dynamics at play in selected modalities:
2024 – 2029 CAGR in USD (excl. CGT); Source: Evaluate Pharma; Lonza Biologics target market.
Source : Citeline Biologics trends (excl. CGT).
2024 – 2029 CAGR in USD (ex CGT) ; Source: Frost & Sullivan (2024); Lonza internal analysis.
Source: Jeffries Pharmaceutical Services: December Biotech Funding (06 January 2025).
Source: J.P.Morgan: 2024 Biopharma Industry Insights (January 2025).
Source: Evaluate Pharma: Global Pharma R&D Reported Expenditures (January 2025).
Source: Internal analysis.
Source: Evaluate Pharma 2024-2029 (2024).
Source: Citeline Analysis (2024).
pre-clinical and clinical large molecules1
commercial large molecules1
Including mammalian, microbial, bioconjugates, drug product services and cell and gene therapy products (personalized medicines are included in pre-clinical and clinical molecules only, early development services are included for pre-clinical molecules only).
The Biologics division1 comprises a full-service CDMO, providing development and manufacturing services to pharma and biotech companies. We offer different manufacturing scales and development services, as well as supporting customers throughout the molecule lifecycle – from lead optimisation, to pre-clinical, through to clinical and commercial phases, including Biologics License Application (BLA) support services. We have one of the most complete offerings across technologies and scales, offering a wide range of services, including regulatory services. We can deliver tailored services that meet specific customer needs. We bring deep and long-standing industrial expertise in commercial delivery, with rigorous standards of quality, safety, efficiency and value providing a unifying thread across modalities.
Our new organizational structure, announced in December 2024, will become operational on 1 April 2025 with three integrated business platforms: Integrated Biologics, Advanced Synthesis and Specialized Modalities. Capsules & Health Ingredients, which we plan to exit at the appropriate time, will operate as an independent business platform.
Our largest network – spanning across scales, capabilities, technologies and geographies – lies in our Mammalian business unit. We are seeing the addition of a healthy number of new molecules entering our pipeline across all phases. Several late phase molecules are set to enter commercial stage in the near future, securing our commercial growth and driving demand in large-scale manufacturing. The ongoing trend for outsourcing, combined with the increased demand for existing molecules, and the growing number of molecules expected to reach commercialization in the near future, offers a market opportunity in the coming years.
We will continue to strengthen our robust pipeline by maintaining a strong focus on lifecycle management and integrated solutions with Drug Product Services and Bioconjugation services. We remain committed to providing a full spectrum of mammalian development and manufacturing services for all molecule types. We will continue to invest in innovation to ensure speed and success in the early stages, while maintaining reliability and quality of commercial supply.
In 2024, we ramped-up our new 2,000L assets in Portsmouth (US) to support customers seeking small-scale manufacturing in the United States. The facility now consolidates demand across stages at a single site, from clinic to launch and scale-up, with 6,000L and 20,000L bioreactors. This development facilitated our consolidation, which led to the planned decommissioning of our sites in Hayward (US) and Guangzhou (CN).
The successful acquisition of the Vacaville site (US) secures long-term commercial supply for our customers. Vacaville is one of the largest biologics manufacturing facilities in the world, with a total bioreactor capacity of around 330,000 liters. This was supported by the technical completion of the large-scale facility in Visp (CH), which adds six 20,000L bioreactors to meet increasing market demand for biologics.
With mandates to manufacture eight commercial products and a track record in large-scale complex protein and vaccine production, our Microbial business unit is a leader in late-phase and commercial supply for customers looking for reliability and quality. In 2024, we celebrated our 40th anniversary of working in the microbial space, building on a legacy of expertise and innovation. Our journey includes more than 70 GMP technology transfers into Lonza, reflecting our long-standing commitment to quality and innovation. With our proprietary XS Technologies® expression system, state-of-the-art development labs, and GMP manufacturing scales spanning from 70 liters to 15,000 liters (including a new mid-scale production facility), our facility in Visp (CH) enables us to offer services that meet our customers’ needs across the entire product lifecycle.
ADCs consist of an antibody that can identify and locate a target cancer cell, a cytotoxic payload to kill the cell and a chemical linker to bind the two components together. ADCs have the capacity to revolutionize the cancer treatment landscape, but the production process is highly complex and integrated. It requires deep technical expertise, leading technology, and well-controlled facilities to ensure safety, quality, and efficacy.
We provide robust expertise and experience in drug conjugation. The application of this targeted modality is expanding beyond its historical use in ADCs for oncology to address medical needs in other areas, including indications such as muscular disorders and rare diseases, as well as treatment modalities like vaccines and ophthalmology.
We are a leader in the manufacturing of commercially available ADCs, and we see significant further growth potential. Since 2006, we have produced more than 1,400 cGMP batches for more than 70 programs. Our production capacity is increasing with new assets coming online, leading to close to 400 batches in 2024. Additionally, batch sizes are increasing as more products reach commercialization, reflecting growing market demand.
We develop and produce all ADC components, drawing on expertise across divisions. The business benefits from a high level of integration with other modalities, including Mammalian, HPAPI and Drug Product. In 2024, we invested in all five technology areas needed for manufacturing bioconjugates at different scales, as outlined in the graph on the right, further strengthening our integrated supply chain. As a result, our bioconjugates offering now spans drug substance and newly added drug product manufacture for early clinical and commercial supply, including an early development focus on payload and site-specific linker technology.
This increased capacity includes the expansion of early development capability and laboratories offering expertise and speed in process development and scale-up for a wide range of bioconjugation approaches (including mAbs, proteins, and different types of linker and payloads such as cytotoxic molecules, oligonucleotides, polysaccharides, and radio labelled molecules). This accelerates time to market, while ensuring long-term supply capabilities.
Enabling Early Innovation
We are continually investing in R&D and innovation to meet future demand alongside market needs for more diverse and complex ADCs. Our position at the forefront of bioconjugation innovation has been strengthened through the acquisition of Synaffix and the integration of its leading technology platform into our offering.
Through a unique combination of technology access, discovery services, and manufacturing capabilities, we help drive the next wave of innovation in ADCs by accelerating timelines and reducing complexity on the journey to commercialization.
To further extend our offering and complement our intellectual property on site-specific conjugation, we collaborated with leading bioconjugation technology providers to offer state-of-the-art solutions.
The resulting Lonza Bioconjugation Toolbox offers a variety of conjugation technologies, linkers, and payloads to drug developers seeking to de-risk the development of drug candidates from the very beginning by preventing pitfalls and dead ends in later development stages.
Meeting Market Demand for Commercial Manufacture
To meet growing market demand for large-scale manufacturing, we are expanding our bioconjugation capacity in Visp (CH) by building two multipurpose manufacturing suites. The expansion will provide additional manufacturing capacity for launch and commercial supply to meet growing market demand.
Furthermore, as part of an extended long-term collaboration, we will build a customer-dedicated bioconjugation suite in Visp to support the manufacture, handling and containment of highly-potent modalities
at a commercial scale.
Drug Product Manufacture for Bioconjugates
Our network has continued to adapt to the evolving ADC landscape and the increasing number of commercial molecules in the ADC pipeline. To allow us to deliver on the expected progression of ADC drug candidates through to commercialization, we expanded our offering to include filling lines specifically designed to manufacture pre-clinical, clinical, or commercial batches of highly-potent compounds.
The expansion includes new GMP filling lines for ADCs at our sites in Stein (CH) and Basel (CH). These assets, specifically designed to produce pre-clinical batches of highly potent compounds, directly support essential pre-clinical activities for ADC drug programs, such as toxicology testing and stability.
This approach aims to provide a seamless end-to-end solution for drug developers and support the industry's goal of advancing and commercializing these life-saving therapies to benefit patients worldwide.
Our Drug Product Services (DPS) business unit provides fully integrated, phase-appropriate solutions to drug product development and manufacturing. It addresses formulation, process design, and primary packaging. Our approach helps our customers to bring a drug product to market. Furthermore, we support customers in addressing various challenges across formulation, analytical, process development, and drug product manufacturing. In the last five years, we have expanded from drug product development services into clinical and commercial fill and finish.
The DPS portfolio includes expertise in drug product injection and infusion, covering various routes of parenteral administration such as intravenous, subcutaneous and intravitreal. With a growing team of more than 700 professionals, we offer an integrated approach across various biologics modalities. This includes standard monoclonal antibodies as well as more complex molecule formats such as bispecific antibodies, fusion proteins, recombinant proteins and bioconjugates, including ADCs.
DPS partners with the drug substance business units to offer end-to-end solutions, including drug substance and drug product. There is increasing demand for integrated solutions that decomplexify and de-risk supply through strategic partnership with a single CDMO.
We pioneered the large-scale commercial manufacturing of mRNA medicines during the COVID-19 pandemic, in record time. It is a testament to our adoption of new technology, and the strength of our development and manufacturing knowledge, that we can deploy new offerings at speed. Since then, mRNA technology has advanced in multiple therapeutic areas, with many projects now in early development. To support these projects, we have opened a new integrated mRNA/lipid nanoparticles (LNP) manufacturing complex at our cell and gene therapy site in Geleen (NL), leveraging local expertise and providing development opportunities for our employees. The expansion includes IND-enabling, clinical and small-scale commercial manufacturing services. It also includes areas for process and analytical development, cGMP manufacturing and quality control for mRNA and LNP necessary for formulating mRNA-based medicines.
Our Licensing business manages access to our licensable Intellectual Property (IP), enabling companies to incorporate proven technologies and accelerate the development of new therapeutics. Our differentiated licensing offering is particularly suited for pharmaceutical, biotechnology companies and research institutions conducting early research. The business drives innovation and strategic partnerships, enabling both start-ups and major players in the industry to leverage our industrial capabilities and reach. Our Evolving IP offering spans multiple modalities. With decades of continual innovation, our GS® mammalian gene expression system is a core component of a more comprehensive set of expression technology solutions that span diverse therapeutic modalities. We serve more than 500 active licensing customers, alongside more than 200 Research Evaluation Agreements. More than 85 approved therapeutics contain Lonza’s out-licensed IP, reaching millions of patients each year. To strengthen our Bioconjugates services and keep offering the best possible platforms to our customers, we acquired and integrated Synaffix in 2023, a company with strong proprietary conjugation technology.
Furthermore, in order to better support early-stage customers across the biologics network, our Early Development Services (EDS) team is now centralized within our Licensing business unit, enabling improved support for early stage, pre-clinical customers with a complete end-to-end service solutions across all modalities. The advanced capabilities of EDS align seamlessly with the business focus on fostering innovation and supporting customers.
In 2024, our Biologics division reported sales in line with the prior year (-0.5% CER), with growth from sustained commercial demand offset by the loss of COVID-related mRNA business and the related termination impact in 2023. Growth was mainly driven by strong performance in Mammalian and Bioconjugates.
To strengthen our ability to meet customer needs, we continued investing in the expansion of our end-to-end offering, supporting the entire drug lifecycle from early development to commercial manufacturing.
Comparison vs. Prior Year
Sales (CHF)
CORE EBITDA (CHF)
CORE EBITDA Margin
Sales growth at Constant Exchange Rates (CER).
Sales growth at Constant Exchange Rates (CER), adjusted for COVID-related mRNA business.
In 2024, we strengthened our offering in our Mammalian business, which represents the largest set of capabilities across our network. Through the successful acquisition of the Genentech Vacaville site in California (US) from Roche, we have significantly extended our capacity for large-scale mammalian drug substance manufacturing in the US, the world’s largest pharmaceutical market. This acquisition has created a significant West Coast commercial manufacturing presence close to San Francisco’s pharma and biotech hub, complementing our existing East Coast manufacturing site in Portsmouth, as well as our international network across Europe and Asia Pacific. With a total bioreactor capacity of around 330,000 liters, the Vacaville site is one of the largest biologics manufacturing facilities in the world. We plan to invest approximately CHF 500 million to further upgrade the facility and add capabilities to meet demand for the next generation of mammalian biologics therapies. The acquisition has significantly extended manufacturing capacity for current commercial customers and new molecules on the path to commercialization within our network.
Additionally, the commencement of commercial GMP operations in our new large-scale mammalian facility in Visp (CH) is scheduled for H1 2025. Due to specific demand, the facility will be further equipped with the latest N-1 perfusion technologies for the production of next-generation monoclonal antibodies. The addition of six 20,000L bioreactors in Visp, alongside the Vacaville acquisition, further strengthens our ability to meet the long-term commercial supply needs of our customers.
In 2024, we also released the first GMP batch at our next-generation mammalian manufacturing facility in Portsmouth (US). This marks a significant milestone, allowing the facility to help meet the increasing market demand for small- to mid-scale volumes of mammalian-derived biologics and support the implementation of high-titer and high-throughput platform processes.
Within our Microbial business, we completed an expansion at our facility in Visp (CH) which adds mid-scale manufacturing capacity for the clinical and commercial supply of microbially-produced biologics. This expansion increases flexibility for our customers and complements the existing small-scale and large-scale microbial manufacturing assets at the site.
We continued to strengthen our drug product services offering with the addition of new assets and the introduction of an offering for cytotoxic ADCs. In 2024, we completed the expansion of our footprint in Basel (CH) with an additional building, equipped to support late-stage clinical and commercial projects with additional quality control and bioanalytics capacity. The expansion also includes lab space for handling highly potent substances required for cytotoxic ADCs. Furthermore, we are bringing a flexible clinical filling line online that will allow us to fill cytotoxic ADCs.
Construction is also underway for our new commercial large-scale fill-finish facility in Stein (CH). This facility will enable us to provide customers with a commercial-scale supply of pharmaceutical products in different formats, including vials and syringes.
President, Biologics Division
2024 was a year of focused and strategic growth for our Biologics business. As integrated service offerings become increasingly important, Lonza remains at the forefront of this trend. We successfully completed the acquisition of our large-scale manufacturing facility in Vacaville from Roche, significantly enhancing our manufacturing capacity to continue to serve commercial customers and support the development of new molecules.
In 2024, Bioconjugates benefited from continued strong demand across both clinical and commercial services.
We expanded our filling capacity in Stein (CH) with a new customer-dedicated filling line for the commercial supply of ADCs. Once completed, this will enhance our comprehensive, end-to-end development and manufacturing services for ADCs, simplifying the path from DNA-to-IND and beyond for our customers.
Building on a successful long-term relationship where Lonza manufactured all key elements of bioconjugates at a commercial scale, we have further extended our collaboration with a major global biopharmaceutical partner. The extended agreement will expand the dedicated bioconjugation footprint for the customer with the construction of a new bioconjugation suite at our Visp (CH) site. We will also provide commercial-scale monoclonal antibody (mAb) manufacturing services for a new ADC targeting solid tumors. The new bioconjugation suite will occupy approximately 800m2 of manufacturing space and will support the manufacture, handling, and containment of highly-potent modalities.
Furthermore, we are expanding our bioconjugation capacity in Visp by building two multipurpose 1,200L manufacturing suites. The new suites will occupy approximately 2,000m2 and double our multipurpose capacity for the launch and commercial supply of bioconjugates. The flexible multi-customer suites are designed to run the increasingly complex and variable processes needed to manufacture ADCs and other bioconjugates maturing through the drug pipeline.
We have seen high interest in our strengthened ADC offering through our acquisition of Synaffix. To further enhance our offering in this space, we have expanded the Synaffix footprint in the Netherlands, enabling us to offer increased Early Development Services capacity to companies developing novel therapeutic candidates. Furthermore, in 2024, Synaffix collaborated with BigHat Biosciences on the development of machine learning-enabled ADC. This collaboration showcases how drug developers can leverage a fully integrated range of services within our Biologics division.
Early in 2024, we signed a collaboration agreement with Acumen Pharmaceuticals to manufacture their novel therapeutic sabirnetug for the treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Sabirnetug targets toxic soluble amyloid beta oligomers, a primary cause of AD, and is the first of its kind in clinical development. Our new, next-generation single-use manufacturing facility in Portsmouth (US) will support the production of sabirnetug, potentially bringing new treatment options to patients suffering from AD. In line with our strategy to offer an integrated end-to-end offering for biologics manufacturing, we extended the successful relationship with Acumen later in 2024 to enable the commercial launch of sabirnetug. The extension will provide drug product manufacturing services for early phase and potential commercial supply from our Visp (CH) site.
To bring innovative solutions to our customers and their patients, we continue to focus on leveraging our expertise and experience across multiple areas and modalities. A key innovation focus area in 2024 was the development of novel mammalian expression platforms and bioprocessing technologies to significantly increase productivity and improve process robustness for our clinical and commercial customers.
We have developed and implemented technologies across several clinical and commercial assets to intensify biomanufacturing and significantly increase product titers. When combined with innovative purification technologies, these high titers result in very high-yielding processes. In addition, we have successfully developed and implemented several in-line testing process analytical technologies (PATs), which allow us to improve process robustness through machine learning (ML) and automation.
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