TOKYO – June 29, 2023 – FUJIFILM Corporation (President and CEO, Representative Director: Teiichi Goto) today announced that the company has appointed Lars Petersen as the new president and chief executive officer (CEO) of FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies, effective immediately. Petersen succeeds Martin Meeson who has served as FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies president and CEO since 2020.  

Petersen has over 30 years of operational and leadership experience in life sciences and biopharmaceuticals. He most recently served as the chief operating officer of the FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies site in Hillerød, Denmark, as well as head of the company’s large-scale strategic business unit. In this capacity he has been responsible for the company’s $6.2B global expansions in both Hillerød and Holly Springs, North Carolina. He has also played a pivotal role in driving the successful execution of FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies’ Climate Strategy in alignment with Fujifilm’s Sustainable Value Plan 2030. Prior to joining FUJFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies he held leadership positions at Biogen, Novo Nordisk and Genentech/Roche.  

“Lars is a visionary leader with an excellent reputation for delivering outstanding operational and financial results and for establishing and delivering long-term value for our Bio CDMO customers,” said Toshi Iida, corporate vice president of FUJIFILM Corporation and chairman of FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies. He added “I have every confidence in Lars’ ability to lead the FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies to realize its full potential as a true partnership development manufacturing organization for Advancing Tomorrow’s Medicine. His organizational knowledge, breadth and depth of experience in biopharmaceuticals make him the ideal leader to spearhead the company successfully through its next growth phase.” 

Fujifilm has set a target to achieve an annual revenue of 200 billion yen for its Bio CDMO business by fiscal year ending March 2025. Beyond fiscal year ending March 2026, Fujifilm expects the annual growth rate of its Bio CDMO Business to 20%, due to new process capabilities, in-house capacity, inflation and increasing global demand for large scale mammalian production capacity*. Going forward, Fujifilm will continue to contribute to the healthcare industry by providing a stable supply of high quality biopharmaceuticals.   

About FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies 
FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies, a subsidiary of FUJIFILM Corporation, is a world-leading contract development and manufacturing organization partner for the development and manufacture of biologics, vaccines and advanced therapies. The company operates a global network with major locations in the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Denmark and it is building a new manufacturing site in Holly Springs, North Carolina, USA. FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies has over thirty years of experience in the development and manufacture of recombinant proteins, vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, among other large molecules, viral products and medical countermeasures expressed in a wide array of microbial, mammalian, and host/virus systems. The company offers a comprehensive list of services from cell line development using its proprietary pAVEway™ microbial and Apollo™X cell line systems to process development, analytical development, clinical and FDA-approved commercial manufacturing. Mitsubishi Corporation is a 20% shareholder of FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies’ UK, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, Watertown, Massachusetts and College Station, Texas sites. For more information, go to: www.fujifilmdiosynth.com.

About Fujifilm 
FUJIFILM Corporation, Tokyo, is an operating company of FUJIFILM Holdings Corporation along with FUJIFILM Business Innovation Corp. FUJIFILM Holdings leverages its depth of knowledge and proprietary core technologies to deliver Value from Innovation in our products and services in the business segments of healthcare, materials, business innovation, and imaging. Our relentless pursuit of innovation is focused on providing social value and enhancing the lives of people worldwide. Fujifilm is committed to responsible environmental stewardship and good corporate citizenship. For more information about Fujifilm’s Sustainable Value Plan 2030, click here. For the year ended March 31, 2023, the company had global revenues of approximately 2.9 trillion yen (21 billion $USD at an exchange rate of 134 yen/dollar). For more information, please visit: www.fujifilmholdings.com. 

*Large scale capacity defined as that over 10,000L with multiple trains. This capacity will continue its double-digit growth trajectory, as biosimilars emerge as a driving force following the patent expiration of highly successful biological blockbusters.