Samsung Group announced last week that it would invest 600 billion won ($570 million) in Samsung BioLogics, a biopharmaceutical affiliate of the conglomerate, over the next two years.

The move is part of Samsung’s efforts to find a new growth engine alongside its mobile and electronics businesses, market watchers said.

According to the regulatory filing, the biopharmaceutical firm will issue new shares sequentially from February next year through August 2015.

Samsung Electronics and Samsung Everland, the two largest shareholders in the bio firm, will inject 301 billion won, respectively, to buy the shares during the same period.

Samsung Everland, a theme park operator, is the de facto holding company of Samsung Group.

Around 304 billion won out of the investments to be made by the electronics firm and the theme park company will be spent in building a new factory for BioLogics, and the rest will be used to finance the biologics firm’s subsidiary BioEpis, a biosimilar manufacturer.

The investments are in line with Samsung’s project announced in 2010 to focus on its future core businesses.

At the time, Korea’s largest conglomerate pledged to invest 2.1 trillion won in the biopharmaceutical business over the next 10 years.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)