CDMO Industry Research Report: The Global Market Size Will Reach $231 Billion in 2030 | Focusing on the Boao Health Forum

CDMO is an institution that provides process development and preparation, process optimization, registration, validation, approval production, and commercial customization R&D and production services for products, especially innovative products, of pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology firms. Guo Jing, Senior Consulting Director of Frost & Sullivan's Greater China Healthcare Team, pointed out that CDMO evolved and iteratively upgraded from CMO (Contract Manufacturing Outsourcing). As competition among pharmaceutical companies becomes increasingly fierce, simple contract manufacturing by traditional CMO enterprises can no longer meet the needs of pharmaceutical companies for cost reduction and efficiency improvement. Therefore, CDMO enterprises that can use their own production equipment and technical advantages to help pharmaceutical companies optimize production processes and carry out customized large-scale production have emerged. The CDMO industry has been continuously developing since its infancy and has now entered a stable development period.

Its services cover the entire process of drug R&D and production, including preclinical, clinical, and commercial stages. CDMO companies can provide one-stop solutions to continuously assist in the commercialization process of drug listing. According to the type of drug, the sub-sectors of CDMO are mainly divided into three categories: small molecule CDMO, large molecule CDMO (including peptides/antibodies/proteins/vaccines, etc.), and cell gene therapy (CGT) CDMO. The Report shows that when broken down by drug type, the largest proportion of the entire CDMO market is in the chemical drug field, followed by the antibody/protein/non-nucleic acid vaccine field, then the recently very popular cell gene therapy field, and finally the peptide field.

Under the wave of innovative R&D, competition in the pharmaceutical industry has intensified, and the division of labor in the pharmaceutical industry chain has gradually become more specialized, refined, and customized.The Report points out that CDMO companies, with their own technical advantages and production capabilities, assist pharmaceutical companies in realizing from concept to product, from process development to large-scale production. Entrusting CDMO companies has become an important path for innovative R&D and production. Both start-up pharmaceutical companies and large pharmaceutical companies can benefit from the high-quality services provided by CDMO. CDMO also keeps up with the ever-changing changes in the pharmaceutical market, continuously optimizing its technical platform, expanding business scope, and extending the industry chain to meet the actual needs of different types of customers.

‘CDMO is a core participant in the drug R&D industry chain, and cooperation with CDMO can enhance the core competitiveness of pharmaceutical companies.’ Guo Jing further explained that CDMO has four major advantages: assisting in R&D and production, reducing enterprise costs, improving R&D production efficiency, and promoting technological iteration.

Since 2019, there have been several large-scale financing events in the domestic CDMO industry. The injection of capital has helped the CDMO industry develop rapidly. From the perspective of sub-sectors, biopharmaceutical CDMO and cell gene therapy CDMO companies are highly favored by the capital market.

The competitiveness of CDMO companies mainly focuses on multiple aspects such as R&D capabilities, emerging technology development and application, quality systems, raw material supply, cost optimization, and production capacity. In order to further improve their industry competitiveness and provide customers with better solutions, CDMO companies continuously expand production capacity, expand business scope, and extend service chains through a strategic model that combines internal development and external mergers and acquisitions.

The Report shows that from 2019 to 2022, leading domestic CDMO companies such as Jiu Zhou Pharmaceutical, WuXi AppTec, WuXi Biologics, Kanglong Chemical, and Tengsheng Bio-pharmaceuticals, while developing internally, launched several mergers and acquisitions to extend the industry chain through external development strategies, optimize strategic layout to expand business scope and production capacity. For example, Via Biologics acquired 80% of the equity of Langhua Pharmaceutical for 2.56 billion yuan; Jiu Zhou Pharmaceutical acquired 100% of the equity of Suzhou Novartis for 790 million yuan; WuXi Biologics acquired the British gene therapy technology company OXGENE for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Guo Jing said that the future development of China's CDMO industry will gradually become more segmented, and it is expected that the market will continue to expand in the future.