Korean booths have been busy with foreign visitors at CPhI Worldwide, the world`s largest pharma trade exhibition returning to Milan, Italy on Tuesday after a two-year hiatus amid enlightened attention to Korean bio capacity during pandemic period.

A total of 1,075 companies from around the world joined this year’s platform dedicated to potential supply and purchase deals for promising therapeutic chemicals and substances. K-bio was represented by 18 companies whose booths drew unexpectedly heated responses from visitors, reflecting the country’s elevated status in the global pharma industry probably thanks to some recent striking license deals, including Samsung Biologics’ contract production of Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines against Covid-19.

Samsung Biologics with its own promotional pavilion in the exhibition saw the line of visitors snaking around the corner. Samsung, previously recognized only as an electronic hardware company, is now growing in value as a biotech company, a foreign visitor said. “I came to visit Samsung Biologics’ booth on the first day of the event because I am already familiar with its CMO power,” the visitor said.

Samsung Biologics is highlighting its competitiveness as a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) with a large panoramic show panel in its booth where visitors can see the company`s innovations and achievements at a glance.

JW Holdings, the only Korean pharma firm present in the finished drug product exhibition hall, attracted attention from visitors at its booth dedicated to its mainstay products of carbapenem antibiotics and total parenteral nutrition brand Winuf. According to the company, it has about 40 one-hour meetings with potential buyers mostly from Europe and the Middle East during the three-day exhibition.

Another Korean exhibitor KB Pharm already arranged 30 plus buyer meetings. On the first day of its exhibition, the company discussed a potential contract manufacturing deal with Basilea Pharmaceutica International of Switzerland for 5th-gen. cepha antibiotics.

By Han Jae-beom and Minu Kim

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]