In 2022, the Korean healthcare industry seemed out of the Covid-19 shock. However, the industry had a rough year amid the economic downturn, jittery investor sentiment, and higher costs of imported raw materials. Nevertheless, the local healthcare industry showed a glimpse of future growth as conglomerates such as GS and Lotte entered the industry and digital healthcare companies achieved rapid growth. Korea Biomedical Review has compiled the five biggest healthcare news stories in 2022. -- Ed.
Three business groups -- Lotte, HD Hyundai, and Doosan -- drew attention because of their moves regarding the biopharma industry this year.
During shareholders' meetings held in March, the three conglomerates announced their plans to enter the healthcare industry.
For starters, Lotte Holdings declared bio and healthcare as the Lotte Group's new growth engine at the shareholders' meeting, declaring it would directly invest in nurturing its bio and healthcare subsidiaries.
Lotte Holdings announced that it plans to invest 70 billion won ($55.1 million) into establishing Lotte Healthcare Corp. and building a platform that will provide comprehensive solutions in all areas of healthcare, from diagnosis to prescription.
It then launched Lotte Biologics in June and its U.S. subsidiary in Delaware, U.S., in July, jumping into the biopharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) business.
Lotte plans to enter the global biopharmaceutical market through large-scale investments of up to 1 trillion won to build a biopharmaceutical production plant in Korea.
The recently renamed HD Hyundai Group, the parent of Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI), also announced its intention to enter the healthcare industry. It then unveiled plans to support new businesses in four future industries, including the healthcare industry, and acquired a white bio subsidiary.
The Doosan Group also added the medical device business to its business portfolio through a revision of the articles of incorporation at the shareholders' meeting. In addition, Doosan will target the biopharmaceutical product container market.
The CJ Group, which sold CJ Healthcare in 2018, launched CJ Bioscience in January and reentered the biopharmaceutical industry. CJ Bioscience plans to develop new drugs based on microbiome technology.
Aggressive investment by conglomerates that entered the healthcare industry ahead of latecomers also drew attention.
In April, SK Chemicals announced its goal of achieving sales of more than 1 trillion won by 2025 by investing more than 600 billion won in its pharmaceutical and biotechnology units. Sk Chemicals also aim to advance into new biofields, such as gene editing, gene therapy, target protein degradation, and cell therapy.
LG Chem also spent about 800 billion won to acquire Aveo, a U.S. pharmaceutical company specializing in oncology.
The GS Group, which acquired Hugel, began a full-fledged move into the healthcare industry by appointing key executives to Hugel's board of directors.