Fosun Pharma Company Visit: From Generic Manufacturer to Global Innovator

A Fosun Pharma company visit puts a delegation inside one of the few Chinese pharmaceutical groups that can demonstrate the whole upgrade path of the country's drug industry in a single afternoon — from selling generics, to making innovative drugs, to selling them outside China. The programme runs at the group's exhibition hall in Shanghai and at the laboratory of Henlius, its biologics subsidiary, and is built around a management session on how the company remade itself. What a team takes home is not a product walkthrough. It is how a thirty-year-old generics business funded, timed and organised a shift into innovative medicine while keeping a distribution network, a device business and a hospital network running alongside it.

Key takeaways

The programme runs at Fosun Pharma's headquarters in Shanghai — the exhibition hall known as the Planet Hall — and at the Henlius laboratory, with the option of the Fosun Art Centre instead of the laboratory. A half-day module takes about three hours; a full-day version runs from 09:30 to 16:30.

The reason to go is the structural story, not the pipeline. In 2025 the group reported revenue of 41.66 billion yuan, up 1.45 per cent, and net profit attributable to shareholders of 3.37 billion yuan, up 21.69 per cent. Revenue barely moved while profit rose by a fifth, and the explanation sits in the composition: innovative-drug revenue reached 9.89 billion yuan, up 29.59 per cent and equal to 33.16 per cent of the pharmaceutical business, while innovative-drug research absorbed 80.26 per cent of pharmaceutical R&D spending.

Overseas revenue reached 12.98 billion yuan, up 14.87 per cent, and the group's innovative products are sold in more than 90 countries and territories. The interesting question for a visiting team is not the number but the route: how a Chinese group buys its way into regulated markets through acquisitions rather than attempting to build regulatory capability from scratch.

Four named products carry the exhibition and each illustrates a different kind of first — a global first-in-class claim, a China-EU dual approval, a first domestically approved CAR-T therapy, and a WHO first-line treatment for severe malaria that has reached more than 56 million patients.

The management session is where the visit earns its time. The standard theme is how a large group runs strategic transformation and business innovation, structured around why the change was necessary, which obstacles were encountered, and how the shift was carried into management systems rather than left as a strategy document. We arrange the programme end to end, including site scheduling on the Chinese side and English interpretation on site.

Key visit details

Where the visit is held

Location — Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical (Group) Co., Ltd., listed in both Shanghai and Hong Kong under 600196.SH and 02196.HK. The programme is based at the group's Shanghai headquarters and exhibition hall, with the second stop at the Henlius laboratory, also in Shanghai. Where the delegation prefers it, the Fosun Art Centre can replace the laboratory visit.

Getting there — both stops sit inside the city, which makes the programme straightforward to fold into a Shanghai schedule. Henlius operates a production base in Xuhui District holding Chinese and European Union GMP certification, and a second base in Songjiang holding Chinese GMP certification. We plan transport as part of the programme, including pickup from your hotel and transfers between the two stops.

Format and duration

Duration — a half-day version of roughly three hours, or a full-day version running from 09:30 to 16:30. The half-day format combines the exhibition hall, a management session and a choice of the Henlius laboratory or the Fosun Art Centre.

Format — a guided walk through the exhibition hall with a corporate film, one or two seated sessions with company speakers, and a laboratory walk. In the full-day version the morning session is built around the group's approach to AI and digitalisation, and the afternoon around strategic transformation and business innovation. Session topics are customisable in advance.

Who the programme suits

Best suited to — pharmaceutical and biotech management teams; medical-device and diagnostics businesses; healthcare investors and analysts; hospital and healthcare-service operators; and corporate strategy teams from any industry studying how a mature business rebuilds its growth engine.

Main themes — the generics-to-innovation transition and how it was financed; building antibody, ADC, small-molecule and cell-therapy platforms; obtaining Chinese, European and United States GMP approvals for the same product; in-licensing, out-licensing and overseas acquisition as market-entry routes; and where artificial intelligence has actually been deployed across R&D, quality control and operations.

Booking, group size and site rules

Booking — around 30 days in advance is the practical lead time. The programme is best suited to groups of 10–20 participants, and two weeks' notice is the minimum the host asks for when booking a slot.

Visiting requirements — the management session is capped at 30 people, and the art centre and catering option at 45. Laboratory access is subject to the site's own rules on the day, including restrictions on photography and on movement through working areas, and the specific conditions for your programme are confirmed during planning.

Why a Fosun Pharma visit is worth a delegation's day

The company started in January 1994 as Shanghai Fosun Industrial, listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in August 1998 and took its current name in 2004. Between 2002 and 2009 it acquired Yaopharma, Guilin Pharma and Wanbang Pharmaceutical, took a stake in Sinopharm to enter pharmaceutical distribution, and established two platforms — Fosun Creative for small molecules and Henlius for biologics — that became the foundation of the innovative-drug business. From 2013 to 2019 it acquired Israel's Alma Lasers, India's Gland Pharma and Sweden's Breas, and formed a joint venture with Kite Pharma that brought the CAR-T therapy Yescarta to China. The innovative-drug harvest began in 2019 and has not stopped since.

That sequence is the argument for the visit. Most presentations about pharmaceutical transformation in China describe a strategy. This one has a thirty-year transaction record attached to it, and a management team willing to discuss the obstacles rather than only the outcome. In 2025 the group had seven innovative drugs and sixteen indications approved in China and overseas, six innovative-drug marketing applications accepted for review, close to forty clinical trials cleared by regulators, and five innovative drugs added to the national reimbursement list. Research and development spending was 5.91 billion yuan, up 6.46 per cent, and net operating cash flow 5.21 billion yuan, up 16.45 per cent.

The second reason is the structure of the group itself. Fosun Pharma is not a pure biotech and not a conventional generics manufacturer. It holds four businesses at once — pharmaceuticals, medical devices and diagnostics, healthcare services, and distribution and retail — and the exhibition hall is where the interaction between them becomes visible. The device side alone includes the Da Vinci surgical robot, for which a domestically produced Xi system has been approved for urology, general surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, and thoracic surgery; Alma's laser and aesthetic devices; and Breas ventilators. Groups that run a single-business model tend to find the portfolio question — how many businesses a company can hold before the centre of gravity becomes unclear — a more useful argument than the pipeline.

The four products that carry the exhibition

A product exhibition is only as good as the questions it lets a delegation ask. These four are chosen because each one opens a different regulatory or commercial question.

Serplulimab: the global first-in-class claim

Serplulimab, marketed as Hansizhuang, is described as the world's first anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody approved for first-line treatment of extensive-stage small cell lung cancer, and became the first product in its class approved for that indication in the European Union. The commercially interesting part is not the mechanism but the pathway: a Chinese-developed antibody reaching mainstream Western approval, with the documentation and trial design that requires. For a delegation from a regulated market, this is the exhibit that answers whether a Chinese originator can meet the evidence standard rather than only the manufacturing standard.

Trastuzumab biosimilar: one quality system, three regulators

Henlius's trastuzumab biosimilar, sold as Hanquyou internationally with the European brand name Zercepac and the United States brand name HERCESSI, is the first domestically developed monoclonal antibody biosimilar approved in both China and the European Union, and is on the market in close to twenty EU countries including the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain and France. The question a manufacturing delegation should bring is the one the exhibit is built around: what it takes for a single quality system to satisfy Chinese, European and United States GMP inspections simultaneously, and what that implies for plant design, documentation and staff.

CAR-T: getting a frontier therapy paid for

Axicabtagene ciloleucel, marketed as Yescarta and introduced through the Fosun Kite joint venture, was the first CAR-T cell therapy approved in China and has been included in the first commercial insurance innovative-drug catalogue. The commercial problem for cell therapy is rarely the science; it is whether a treatment can be delivered at a price a health system will carry. A delegation working on advanced therapies will get more from the reimbursement and delivery questions here than from the biology.

Artesunate: the public-health exhibit

Injectable artesunate is a WHO-recommended first-line treatment for severe malaria and one of the first original Chinese chemical drugs to reach the world, credited with helping more than 56 million patients with severe malaria. It sits in the exhibition for a reason that is easy to miss: it demonstrates a route to international markets that does not run through the United States or Europe at all, and it is the cleanest example in the room of a Chinese drug creating value in markets where pricing power works differently.

The second stop: inside Henlius

The laboratory stop is the part of the day that converts a corporate presentation into a working site. Henlius was founded in 2010, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange main board in September 2019 under 2696.HK, and was the first biopharmaceutical company to reach profitability under Chapter 18A. It now operates a full-chain platform covering global research, clinical development, registration, manufacturing and commercialisation, employs close to 4,000 people worldwide, and has ten products approved across 60 countries and territories — eight in China, four by the United States FDA and five by the European Commission. That last set of figures places it among Chinese biopharmaceutical companies with the largest number of oncology and autoimmune products approved by the FDA.

In 2025 Henlius reported revenue of 6.667 billion yuan, up 16.5 per cent, net profit of 827 million yuan, and research and development spending of 2.492 billion yuan, up 35.4 per cent. Total capacity stands at 84,000 litres across the Xuhui base, which holds Chinese and EU GMP certification, and the Songjiang base, which holds Chinese GMP certification, and its products have reached more than one million patients worldwide. The company's stated 2030 target is more than twenty products on the global market, fifteen of them in the United States and Europe, and it uses the term C-MNC — a China-headquartered multinational biopharmaceutical company — to describe what it is trying to become.

The outbound licensing side of the group is worth raising in the session. In December 2025 an oral small-molecule GLP-1 receptor agonist developed by Yaopharma was licensed to Pfizer for a non-refundable upfront payment of 150 million US dollars and 350 million US dollars in development milestones, with a potential total transaction value of 2.085 billion US dollars. In the same period the group spent approximately 1.412 billion yuan to take control of Lvgui Pharmaceutical, strengthening its pipeline in neurodegenerative disease. Read together, the two moves describe a group that is buying capability abroad and selling assets abroad at the same time — which is a different posture from either pure in-licensing or pure export.

What different teams take away

For pharmaceutical and biotech management teams — how a company with a generics cash engine decided which frontier platforms to fund, and how it sequenced antibody, ADC, small-molecule and cell-therapy investment rather than entering all four at once.

For manufacturing and quality teams — what a single quality system must satisfy to pass Chinese, European and United States GMP inspection, and what that means for plant design, documentation discipline and training.

For investors and analysts — the composition of growth rather than its headline. Revenue up 1.45 per cent alongside profit up 21.69 per cent is a structure story, and the exhibition is where the structure is legible. Teams covering the wider Chinese healthcare supply chain also pair this stop with the Mindray overseas business on the same trip.

For corporate strategy teams outside healthcare — a thirty-year-old business that rebuilt its growth engine without abandoning its legacy operations. The obstacles the session covers, and the resistance encountered in moving from strategy to management systems, transfer to almost any sector.

For hospital and healthcare-service operators — how a group connects products and services across a hospital network, and where the boundary between the two businesses actually sits in practice.

Sample visit programme

The programme runs in that order by default, and the session topics are set with what your delegation came to find out. Tell us whether the technical, commercial or organisational question matters most and we weight the time accordingly.

Making a drug is a company's capability. Redefining how it makes drugs after thirty years is a company's strategy.

Where a Fosun Pharma visit can be arranged

The programme runs in Shanghai, where both the group headquarters and the Henlius bases are located, so the two stops combine in one day without long transfers. The optional art centre is also in the city.

Most delegations visiting Shanghai pair this stop with one or two others on the same trip — a robotics company, a platform business or an advanced-manufacturing site. The Shanghai tech tour page sets out the combinations that work best by day.

Practical notes for the day

Define the delegation's question before the session. The management session is the strongest part of the programme and the one most sensitive to preparation. Groups that hand over two or three real questions in advance get a session that engages with them directly rather than a standard presentation.

Choose the second stop deliberately. The laboratory and the art centre deliver different things, and groups sometimes select the art centre by default because it sounds less technical. A delegation of scientists or manufacturing leaders should take the laboratory; a delegation whose interest is brand and corporate culture will get more from the art centre.

Watch the group size. The management session is capped at 30 and the art centre and catering option at 45. A larger delegation has to be split, and the split is best decided during planning rather than on arrival.

Interpreting is not a formality. The session runs on regulatory pathways, GMP inspection and licensing economics, and the meaning of a sentence turns on that vocabulary. Interpretation on site is handled by people who work on these visits.

What previous delegations asked us to change

Three adjustments come up repeatedly when we review the programme with groups that have already been through it.

More time on the transformation session, less on the exhibition. The exhibition hall does its job in half an hour. The session on how the shift was actually carried out is the part delegations quote afterwards, and ninety minutes is the minimum for it to go beyond the case study.

Ask about the failures, not only the successes. The standard session covers challenges and resistance. Groups that explicitly invite the harder material get a more useful hour, because the obstacles in a generics-to-innovation transition are the transferable part.

Take the full day if the group is mixed. A half day forces a choice between the AI and digitalisation topic and the transformation topic. Groups with both technical and management interests usually find the full-day format cheaper in the end than booking two separate visits.

Questions before a Fosun Pharma visit

Where is the visit held? At Fosun Pharma's Shanghai headquarters and exhibition hall, with a second stop at the Henlius laboratory in Shanghai or, by preference, the Fosun Art Centre.

How long does the programme take? About three hours for the half-day version, or 09:30 to 16:30 for the full-day version, which adds a session on AI and digitalisation.

Is a production site included? The programme covers the exhibition hall and a laboratory walk rather than a manufacturing line. Production-related questions are addressed in the sessions, and any additional site access is arranged separately and confirmed during planning.

Can the session topic be tailored? Yes. The standard theme is strategic transformation and business innovation, and it is customised to the delegation's industry and concerns in advance. The AI and digitalisation topic is available in the full-day format.

How large a group can be accommodated? The management session is limited to 30 people. The art centre and the catering option are limited to 45.

Can we take photographs? Photography rules are set by the site and vary by area, and they apply particularly in laboratory and working spaces. The specific rules for your programme are confirmed before you travel rather than on the day.

Is this visit useful outside the pharmaceutical industry? Yes. The core of the programme is a thirty-year business rebuilding its growth engine, and the session is structured so that the obstacles and the management mechanics transfer to other sectors.

Is catering available? An optional Western-style set menu is offered for groups of up to 45, requiring seven days' notice.

How far in advance should we book? Around 30 days is the practical lead time, and the host asks for at least two weeks' notice to secure a slot, because the laboratory and the art centre both sit inside operating facilities.

What group size works best? The programme is best suited to groups of 10–20 participants. We charge per group, so larger groups usually offer better value per person. Individuals and smaller groups are welcome to enquire at a higher per-person rate.

Is English interpretation provided? Yes. English interpretation on site is part of how the programme is run, including during the management session.

Arranging your Fosun Pharma visit

We arrange the visit for you end to end: the introduction to the host, the scheduling on the Chinese side and English interpretation on site. Tell us your dates, your delegation size and what you want to see, and we will confirm what can be arranged. Start at chinatechvisits.com/company-visits.