The Korea Pharmaceutical and Bio-Pharma Manufacturers Association (KPBMA), which celebrates its 80th anniversary, has vowed to make 2025 the year of leapfrogging for the biopharma industry with record exports and global new drug approvals.

“In 2024, the Korean pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry proved its strength with meaningful achievements,” KPBMA President Noh Yun-hong said in his New Year message on Thursday. “We will record the largest exports of medicines ever, with a return to high growth in 2025.”

“In particular, new drugs developed by our hands have been approved one after another in developed markets, including the United States, confirming the competitiveness of the Korean pharma and biotech industry,” Noh said.

Regarding global expansion achievements, he said, “Companies have focused attention by presenting meaningful research results at prestigious global conferences. They have expanded their global expansion more aggressively by establishing subsidiaries and pharmaceutical plants in the U.S. and Europe or acquiring local bio companies.”

Noh expressed some concerns, though.

“High exchange rates due to uncertainty in the domestic and international situation are a great burden on the industry,” he said. “It is difficult to predict tomorrow due to changes in the market environment and various systems in 2025.”

“However, we expect the biopharma sector to be reborn as an industry that can provide comfort and hope to the people,” Noh said, suggesting that the solution is never to stop making bold R&D and innovation efforts.

“Together with our 290 member companies, we will continue to develop the industry as we have always done, through unremitting investment, innovation, and hard work,” Noh said, emphasizing that the year 2025, when KPBMA meets its 80th anniversary, will also be the year the association moves toward its 100th anniversary.

“The biopharma industry is moving forward step by step into the future of the national economy,” Noh said. “Let us all make 2025 the ‘Year of Biopharma Industry.’”