Fujifilm Biotechnologies builds new manufacturing facility in North Carolina’s Research Triangle

I like some of Fujifilm’s cameras. But what does it know about pharmaceuticals?

Well, a lot actually.

And on Sept. 24, its drug manufacturing arm Fujifilm Biotechnologies made its next big investment: a $3.2 billion facility in Holly Springs, North Carolina, part of the state’s biotech hub—aka the Research Triangle.

Fujifilm Biotechnologies launched as a drug manufacturer in 2011, making a big shift into healthcare as its film business was failing. Over the last almost 15 years, the company has found success in this model, reporting $2.1 billion in revenue for its healthcare segment in Q4 2025.

A new industry. In 2006, Fujifilm lost a significant portion of its revenue when digital cameras took over and the company could no longer make as much profit from physical film, Lars Petersen, president and CEO of Fujifilm Biotechnologies, told Healthcare Brew.

So the company began to pivot toward healthcare and launched a research lab in Japan in 2006. Then, five years later, Fujifilm had an opportunity to buy two manufacturing facilities reportedly worth $490 million from drug company Merck: one in Morrisville, part of the Research Triangle Park, and one in Billingham, England. It also marked Merck’s transition out of the biologics business, Fierce Pharma reported at the time.

That marked the official launch of Fujifilm Biotechnologies.

The company now has 10 manufacturing sites across the US, the UK, Japan, and Denmark, including the new site in Holly Springs (its second in the Research Triangle Region).

While it may seem weird for a camera company to manufacture medications, “it’s not strange at all,” Pankit Bhalodia, partner at consultancy West Monroe, told us.

Camera companies like Fujifilm are already good at engineering, he continued, meaning they are well positioned to make other complex products—like medications.

Kodak, for example, took a similar path and entered into pharmaceutical ingredient production in 2020, according to CNN.

‘Pure CDMO.’ As a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), Fujifilm Biotechnologies doesn’t work in drug development but instead has contracts with drug companies to make their medications. Those include a $3 billion contract with biotech Regeneron signed in April and a $2 billion deal with Johnson & Johnson in August.

The CDMO industry is currently valued at $139.3 billion, according to science news publication BioSpace, and is expected to grow to $273.9 billion by 2034.

“We are actually proud of calling ourselves a pure CDMO,” Petersen said. “We are not competing with our customers [which are biotech companies].”

The camera maker has also had previous partnerships with Eli Lilly as well as Japanese drugmaker Takeda Pharmaceutical Company.

Touching tariffs? A lot of pharmaceutical companies are announcing new US facilities in the face of the Trump administration’s tariffs. But this new Fujifilm facility was planned back in 2021, Petersen said, “far before anybody thought about tariffs.”

The building is instead part of the company’s business model, dubbed kojoX, which establishes the concept of facilities designed as replicas of its other buildings around the world, so they can therefore make the same products using the same tactics.

Having an international footprint is also a benefit to biotech companies looking for drug manufacturers, Bhalodia said, as it helps diversification and avoids “geopolitical risk” so companies can make strategic decisions about where in the world would be best to make their product. 

“It gives them the flexibility to leverage, whether it’s the Europe-, Asia-, or US-based facility,” he said. “It’s probably a larger strategic play to become a more global CDMO.”