A €300 million (about $350 million) factory in Daejeon will make the ingredients of modern medicine — without burning fossil fuels on site

Merck has opened its Asia-Pacific Bioprocessing Production Center in Daejeon, South Korea — a 44,500-square-metre site and, at more than €300 million (about $350 million), the company's largest life-science investment in the region. The plant will produce the unglamorous essentials biologics are made with: cell-culture media, process liquids, cleaning solutions and sterile sampling products, with automated data capture tracking every batch end to end. It was also designed to run without on-site fossil fuels, using solar power, heat pumps, energy recovery and reused rainwater. Medicines begin long before a pharmacy shelf; this is the supply chain being built closer to the patients of Asia-Pacific, and built clean.

SDG 9 · Industry, innovation and infrastructure — Mechanism: infrastructure build