Almac Clinical Services
Driving Innovation and Supply-Chain Excellence Across APAC
Kevin Cheong, Director, Clinical Operations, APAC, Almac Clinical Services
As Almac Clinical Services marks ten years in Singapore, Director of Clinical Operations for the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, Kevin Cheong, reflects on the global CDMO’s evolution into a strategic partner for APAC sponsors driving innovation, sustainability, and patient-centric excellence. From expanding cold chain capabilities to embracing AI and data-driven supply chains, Almac’s ethos of Supply with Care underpins its mission to overcome complexity through partnership and purpose — advancing human health across one of the world’s most dynamic clinical trial landscapes and beyond.
1. What inspired Almac to establish its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore a decade ago?
The market context in the region at the time made establishing our APAC headquarters in Singapore a very deliberate and strategic decision. APAC was then and still is a powerhouse in drug development. According to Global Data the region accounted for more than 50% of all clinical trials globally between 2017 and 2021. With APAC’s growing impact, coupled with Almac’s mission to advance global human health, it was imperative for us to establish a strong presence and become the strategic partner that sponsors in APAC rely on to help them bring new innovations to patients worldwide.
The biggest question for Almac was how do we best support sponsors operating in APAC and how do we provide a truly regional centre of excellence? Singapore ticked all the right boxes - offering world-class infrastructure, high regulatory standards, strong government support for life sciences, and a talented workforce.
Ten years on and the decision has paid off. We’re positioned right in the growth zone, close to large patient populations, diverse trial sites, and within a regional hotbed of innovation, particularly for complex biologics, vaccines and gene therapies. In fact, our Singapore facility recently received GMP certifications from the Health Sciences Authority Singapore for cell, tissue and gene therapy products – underscoring our commitment to supporting sponsors to pioneer research in these areas. Almac’s global mindset and capability combined with local knowledge and agility, enables us to respond rapidly to sponsors’ evolving needs across primary and secondary packaging, storage, and distribution within APAC.
2. How has the organisation evolved over the past ten years in terms of scale, services, and client reach?
Over the past decade, we have continued to strengthen our position as an essential partner to sponsors across APAC and beyond. We have built on our global expertise to deliver even greater strategic value — supporting clients end-to-end across packaging, labelling, Qualified Person release, and global distribution, all while ensuring the highest standards of compliance and quality.
Our investment and capability expansion in APAC has been significant. Our Singapore headquarters now features multiple state-of-the-art manufacturing and labelling suites, enhanced cold-chain infrastructure, and round-the-clock operations to meet the region’s growing demand for complex and temperature-sensitive trials. We have also expanded our frozen and ultra-low facilities to support advanced therapies, such as biologics and cell and gene therapies.
Almac has built long-standing relationships with over sixty pharma companies in Japan alone, including nine ten BioPharma firms, and continues to manage studies across 110 countries. Our offering is always evolving and now includes pioneering Just-in-Time Manufacturing techniques, Managed Access Programmes, and integrated digital tools, like Almac ONE™ and TempEZ.
Almac has evolved into a strategic extension of our sponsors’ teams — combining scale, innovation, and local insight to help them deliver life-changing therapies efficiently and sustainably.
3. Can you elaborate on the new investment and how it strengthens Almac’s position in the region?
Our latest multi-million-pound investment in Singapore represents a crucial milestone for Almac Clinical Services and for the sponsors we support across APAC. The investment is part of a long-term commitment to expand operational capacity in Singapore and increase regional clinical supply management expertise to address client demand.
This initiative supports our five-year growth strategy, which has included the quadrupling of dedicated -20°C capacity, expansion of secondary cold chain packaging capabilities and enhanced temperature-controlled clinical supply services. These investments address client expectations and market demand to support clinical trials from Singapore and to provide advanced cold chain solutions.
Additionally, in 2024 we invested SG$ 3.2 million in a new frozen facility at our regional headquarters. This GMP-certified expansion includes a 1:1 refrigeration system for full redundancy, along with a dedicated secondary production room that operates under frozen conditions, which is critical for biologics and advanced therapy trials that require precise temperature control.
What this means for our clients is greater capacity, faster turnaround, and even stronger business continuity. It gives us the ability to scale-up quickly when studies ramp-up and to handle an extensive range of temperature-sensitive clinical trial materials — from 2–8 °C right down to -80 °C.
But it’s not just about scale; it’s about strategy. This expansion reinforces Singapore as Almac’s hub for APAC — connecting seamlessly with our global network, while providing local access, regulatory alignment, and 24/7 operational support. It positions us to continue supporting the region’s fast-growing pipeline of complex clinical trials, ensuring we can deliver innovative therapies to patients more efficiently and sustainably than ever before.
4. What steps has the company taken to minimise waste and carbon footprint while maintaining compliance and quality standards?
At Almac, we believe that sustainability and quality aren’t opposing goals. They actually strengthen each other. Our global pledge is to reach net zero by 2045, and we’re already making strong progress. Our APAC headquarters in Singapore recently achieved ISO 50001:2018 certification for energy management. That means we’re using real data to track and optimise energy use, setting clear reduction targets, and continuously improving performance.
We have also committed to cutting our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 50% by 2030, and we’re working closely with our partners and suppliers to reduce Scope 3 emissions right across the value chain too.
From an operations point of view, we have embedded LEAN principles and smarter packaging strategies to reduce overages and minimise waste, without ever compromising compliance or product integrity. Solutions like Almac Adapt, our Just-in-Time Manufacturing and Just in Time Labelling offering, are also helping us avoid unnecessary stock and material use, while preserving precious drug supplies and prioritising patient access.
On the logistics side, our reusable Almac Pod shippers have been a game-changer, cutting single-use packaging waste and improving cold-chain efficiency. Our new frozen facility in Singapore has quadrupled our storage space, while reducing energy consumption per unit.
Ultimately, it’s about supplying care to patients, to partners, and to the planet.
5. What differentiates the APAC clinical supply landscape compared to Western markets?
APAC’s clinical supply landscape is truly unique, not just because it’s growing so rapidly, but because it’s incredibly diverse. Unlike the more centralised and relatively uniform markets in the US or Europe, APAC is a collection of very different countries, each with its own regulatory frameworks, level of infrastructure maturity, and logistical realities.
There are highly developed biopharma hubs like Japan, Singapore, and South Korea — where the infrastructure and regulatory systems are world-class — operating alongside emerging markets with vast, remote geographies that can make each aspect of the clinical supply chain more complex. Ensuring temperature control and chain of custody across those distances, in myriad climates, requires a very different level of planning and flexibility.
While traditionally the region has been more accustomed to managing local or regional studies, that’s changing. We’re now seeing a surge in global clinical trials being run out of APAC. That shift brings its own set of challenges — from navigating multiple regulatory authorities and import/export requirements, to managing multilingual labelling, patient materials, and cultural nuances that impact recruitment and retention.
What also differentiates APAC is the pace of growth. The clinical trials market here is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of around 8.46% between 2025 and 2033, rising toward USD 34.23 billion by 2033. We’re seeing this growth in real time, with our sponsors expanding rapidly in APAC because of the large patient populations and the diversity of genetic and disease profiles.
With that opportunity comes pressure on production, logistics, storage capacity, and lead times, especially when temperature-sensitive biologics, vaccines, or cell and gene therapies are involved. This is where our role has become increasingly strategic. Our regional infrastructure, being anchored in Singapore and supported by teams in Japan and across our global network, is designed to manage that complexity. We combine local expertise with global standards, supported by cutting edge technology platforms to give sponsors real-time visibility and control.
The APAC supply landscape is more nuanced, fragmented, and dynamic Success here depends on deep regional understanding, flexible logistics, and trusted partnerships that can bridge those differences, and that’s exactly where we add value.
6. What trends are shaping clinical trial logistics and cold chain management in APAC?
Clinical trial logistics and cold-chain management in APAC are being shaped by three major trends. Firstly, the volume of trials is rapidly shifting towards APAC. This means sponsors are increasingly running multi-region studies in China, India, Singapore and neighbouring markets, which raises the need for robust logistics networks and cross-border coordination.
Secondly, the complexity of temperature-sensitive products is rising. Cold-chain services now account for about 65.6 % of global clinical trial logistics market size, with the APAC healthcare cold-chain logistics market projected to grow from USD 31.9 billion in 2025 to about USD 41.1 billion by 2030. This drives the need for appropriate packaging and distribution capability and robust end-to-end temperature management.
Thirdly, the pressure for resilience, sustainability and patient-centric models is increasing. The supply-chain disruptions post-COVID, combined with ongoing geopolitical risk in certain global markets, mean companies are seeking partners with back-up routes, multi-country distribution hubs, and flexible inventory management.
7. How is Almac leveraging technology to enhance transparency and efficiency in global clinical trial supply chains?
We’re leveraging technology to drive transparency and efficiency across our global clinical trial supply-chain. One of our flagship solutions is Almac ONE™, a unified end-to-end supplychain platform that brings together patient recruitment, clinical supply planning, and IRT data in a single digital architecture. By integrating these data streams, sponsors can bridge the gap between the physical and digital supply chain and gain real-time visibility over drug inventory, forecast vs actual site demand, chain-of-custody, and shipment status — helping reduce waste, avoid missed milestones, and lower cost all while keeping patients at the heart of the operation.
Another example is our Almac Pod, a smart, reusable temperature-controlled shipper featuring GPS tracking, real-time temperature monitoring, and closed-loop reuse infrastructure. This gives us proactive risk-management capability, for example we can detect and intervene if a cold-chain shipment deviates, rather than discovering the issue post-delivery. On the auditing side, we offer virtual audits leveraging immersive-digital tours and secure collaboration platforms, improving oversight, while reducing travel and scheduling delays and environmental footprint.
Finally, our recent investment in cold-chain infrastructure across multiple global facilities supports scalable, high-fidelity logistics for biologics and advanced therapies.
By marrying robust infrastructure with digital platforms, we enable sponsors to manage clinical-trial supply with greater control, transparency, and responsiveness.
8. As a leader, what principles or strategies guide your approach to driving innovation and operational excellence?
Driving innovation and operational excellence starts with staying connected — to the market, to our clients, and to the patients we ultimately serve. The clinical supply landscape, especially here in APAC, is evolving so quickly that you must balance two things: addressing the immediate, practical needs of sponsors today, and maintaining a strategic view of where technology and science are heading.
We continually assess both our market and client base to understand what’s changing, whether that’s regulatory requirements, trial design trends, or advances in areas like cell and gene therapy. That insight feeds directly into our innovation pipeline.
We also focus on innovation with purpose. We have never been about technology for technology’s sake but invest in solutions that make a tangible difference to our clients’ experience. For example, implementing systems like COSMOS, our ERP platform, and TempEZ, our temperature management system, helps sponsors achieve real transparency and control across their global supply chains.
At the same time, we’re taking a forward-looking view on technologies like AI and data analytics. We’re exploring how they could further streamline forecasting, logistics, and risk management across the entire clinical supply chain.
9. As Almac celebrates ten years of operations in Singapore, what message would you like to share with partners, clients, and the broader life sciences community?
As we celebrate ten years of operations in Singapore, our message is one of gratitude and of shared purpose. Everything Almac has achieved in this region has been built on partnership: with our clients, our colleagues, and the wider life sciences community who trust us to deliver on something far bigger than supply chains — the advancement of human health.
Almac Clinical Services’ ethos of Supply with Care has guided us every step of the way. It’s about more than precision, compliance, or logistics. It’s about remembering that every shipment we pack, label, and deliver ultimately represents hope for a patient and their family. That’s what motivates our teams and drives our continued investment in capability, innovation, and sustainability across APAC and around the world.
Over the past decade, we have navigated extraordinary change together — from the rise of biologics and decentralised trials to unprecedented disruption caused by the global COVID19 pandemic. Yet, through it all, our focus has remained constant: to act as a trusted, flexible partner helping sponsors bring vital therapies to patients safely, efficiently, and ethically.
Looking ahead, we’ll continue to grow with the same purpose that brought us here, combining global excellence with local understanding, embracing new technologies responsibly, and working hand-in-hand with our partners to overcome the challenges ahead.
10. How do you envision the future of clinical trial supply 10 years from now?
I think we’re going to see a fundamental shift in how clinical trial supply chains operate. They’ll be far more AI-driven, with data sitting right at the centre of everything we do. The supply chain of the future will essentially function as a data hub — a fully integrated ecosystem that connects sponsors, sites, depots, couriers, and even patients in real time.
AI and predictive analytics will redefine how we plan, forecast, and manage supply, turning what used to be reactive processes into proactive, automated ones. That means smarter inventory management, reduced waste, and faster, more transparent decision-making across the board.
“But while technology will drive this evolution, the future of clinical trials remains deeply patient-centred — with the rise of decentralised and hybrid models, wearables, and trials conducted in patients’ homes. Many of the current hurdles and red tape around these approaches will fade as regulators, technology providers, and CDMOs work more closely together for the benefit of patients and medical progress.
Our role will be to ensure the supply chain is ready to support that new paradigm: agile, data-enabled, and designed around the patient.
Author Bio
Kevin Cheong graduated from the University of Portsmouth with a BSc in Computing and joined Almac in October 2013. Since then, he has played a pivotal role in establishing Almac’s presence in Asia, including the setup of both the Singapore office and facility as well as the Japan office for Clinical Services. In 2010, he advanced into the clinical supply industry, taking on a regional leadership role that broadened his operational oversight across the Asia-Pacific region. In his current role as Director of Clinical Operations, APAC, Kevin oversees Almac’s operational strategy and execution throughout the region, ensuring the delivery of high-quality clinical supply solutions and the continued expansion of Almac’s footprint in Asia.
