Localisation is the policy that ties the Gulf's biotechnology programmes together. Saudi Arabia wants manufacturing onshore under the National Biotechnology Strategy. The UAE treats local production as a condition of drug-security tenders. Oman is expanding capacity under Vision 2040. In each case the instrument is the same: make market access contingent on making the product locally.
What has been built
A7i's facilities dataset holds twenty-one assets across the six states. Of those, one biologics plant is operating in Saudi Arabia, opened by MS Pharma in August 2025 and described as the first SFDA-approved biologics facility in the Middle East. One biologics facility is operating in Abu Dhabi, Mubadala Bio's DiabTec site, which in June 2026 signed a licensing and supply agreement with Argentina's Biosidus to produce endocrinology, nephrology and oncology biologics. Julphar has manufactured in Ras Al Khaimah since 1980.
Three Saudi sites are under construction or announced: the SaudiBio insulin line, targeting more than half of national insulin need and the first innovator biologic insulin produced in the GCC by 2027; the Lifera and National Resilience sterile injectables plant in Riyadh; and a greenfield Lifera contract manufacturing site in Jeddah with construction scheduled from early 2027 and commissioning planned for 2030.
Tracking progress
The Riyadh sterile injectables plant was announced in November 2023 with a target of more than 125 million units a year, the largest single capacity figure in the region's localisation programme. Its construction and commissioning milestones are the next updates A7i is tracking.
This is the pattern across the dataset. Projects enter the record at announcement, and production output and agreement values are the next layer of reporting. As facilities commission and publish output, the most consequential industrial policy in the region becomes measurable by its results as well as by the announcements that start it.
Memoranda open the process
On 30 October 2025, Lifera announced three separate vaccine localisation memoranda, with Pfizer, Sanofi and MSD, covering manufacturing in the Kingdom with knowledge and technology transfer. On the same day it signed a joint venture with Jamjoom Pharma for a vaccines, biologics and biosimilars facility, and a gene and cell therapy partnership with King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre.
Three tier-one vaccine manufacturers signing on one day is a coordinated policy outcome, and that gives the agreements real weight. They are best read as the opening of a process, and A7i records them as announced for that reason, with commitment as the next milestone.
The direction of technology transfer
Every localisation agreement A7i has verified moves technology inward. Novo Nordisk to SaudiBio. Biosidus to Mubadala Bio. Pfizer, Sanofi and MSD to Lifera. This is what localisation is designed to do, and it works: it builds new capability in the region.
The next question is what happens at the end of a technology transfer programme. A manufacturer that has learned to make someone else's insulin has a factory and a skilled workforce, the foundations from which its own molecules can come. Whether the Gulf's localisation decade produces originating capability alongside a very strong contract manufacturing base is the defining question in the region's biotechnology strategy.