Alvotech Brand Guidelines: Reykjavík 2013, a 2022 Nasdaq Debut & a Biosimilars-Only Plan

Founded by Róbert Wessman in 2013.

Alvotech is a biotechnology company in Reykjavík that develops and manufactures biosimilars — versions of existing biologic medicines. English Wikipedia, in its article on the generics group Alvogen, says Alvotech was founded in 2013 by Róbert Wessman, the Icelandic entrepreneur who earlier ran the generics company Actavis and then founded Alvogen, and that Alvogen was its original investor. The Nordic stock-exchange news service MFN also gives 2013 as the founding year and Reykjavík as the head office.

The company describes its purpose in one line: it is “focused solely on the development and manufacture of biosimilar medicines for patients worldwide.” Its website says it chose a vertically integrated model, running the work itself from research and development through to fill and finish, and relying on commercial partners to sell its products in each market. Wikipedia says it has four research and production sites in Europe and one in India.

Wessman remains the founder in every company statement; Wikipedia lists him as Alvotech’s chairman as of August 2025. Company announcements from October 2026 quote Lisa Graver as chief executive.

From a SPAC merger to two acquisitions.

Alvotech went public through a merger rather than a classic share offering. On 16 June 2022, Nordic Life Science reported, its ordinary shares and warrants began trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market in New York under the tickers ALVO and ALVOW, after its business combination with Oaktree Acquisition Corp. II, a special purpose acquisition company sponsored by an affiliate of Oaktree Capital Management, had been approved by that company’s shareholders on 7 June. The company expected it to be the largest debut on a US exchange by an Icelandic company, the magazine reported, and planned trading on the Nasdaq First North market in Iceland from 23 June. Wikipedia says the shares now also trade on Nasdaq Iceland and Nasdaq Stockholm.

At the time of the listing, Nordic Life Science reported, Alvotech already had commercial partners on several continents, including Teva in the United States, STADA in Europe and Fuji Pharma in Japan, and its first product, a biosimilar to Humira, had launched in Canada and Europe.

In 2025 it added two businesses. On 4 June 2025 it completed the purchase of the research and development organisation of Xbrane Biopharma in Sweden, together with Xbrane’s candidate biosimilar to Cimzia; the deal had been announced on 20 March and approved by Xbrane’s shareholders on 14 April, according to the company’s release. On 9 July 2025 it announced the acquisition of Ivers-Lee Group, a family-owned packaging company founded in Burgdorf, Switzerland, in 1947, with a second unit in Lörrach, Germany. The release said Ivers-Lee would stay a separate legal entity inside Alvotech’s technical operations, assembling autoinjectors and prefilled syringes and packaging vials, and would keep serving its other clients. Its managing director, Peter Schüpbach, a grandson of the founder, stayed in post and joined Alvotech’s technical operations leadership. Alvotech said the Xbrane deal would expand its development capacity and give it a presence in the Swedish life-science sector.

Design and documentation.

Biosimilar makers sell medicines that most people only ever meet as a pack in a pharmacy or a hospital ward, so their public image is built from the places where those medicines are made. Their websites and reports favour gleaming steel bioreactors, vials moving along blue-lit filling lines, scientists in gowns and hoods, and close-ups of prefilled syringes and autoinjector pens. The pictures signal scale and control rather than any single product.

The category is young. The European Medicines Agency’s record shows that the marketing authorisation for Celltrion’s Remsima, a biosimilar of the antibody infliximab, was issued on 10 September 2013, and English Wikipedia describes it as the first biosimilar monoclonal antibody approved by the EMA. Since then a group of companies in Asia, Europe and North America has built ranges of biosimilars, each sold under a brand name of its own, alongside the corporate names covered in this guide.

Their messaging leans on access. Celltrion states a mission of “a healthier tomorrow where no patients are left untreated”; Samsung Bioepis says it makes “quality-assured biologic medicines more accessible, more quickly.” Celltrion’s brand page ties its green to trust. Trade meetings such as the GRx+Biosims conference and the BIO International Convention are where the sector’s companies present their pipelines and meet partners.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each maker — who founded it, who owns it, and which approvals and deals dated sources record — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Made in Reykjavík, sold by partners.

Alvotech’s products carry development codes before they carry brand names. Its pipeline page lists AVT02, a high-concentration adalimumab referencing Humira; AVT04, ustekinumab, referencing Stelara; AVT03, denosumab; AVT05, golimumab; and AVT06, aflibercept, along with a longer list of candidates. In the United States AVT02 is sold as SIMLANDI. A company release in October 2026 said five of its biosimilars were approved and marketed in multiple markets.

Manufacturing sits at the centre of its story, and has also been its main regulatory hurdle. In November 2025 the FDA issued a complete response letter for the AVT05 application, Nordic Life Science reported on 3 November 2025, citing deficiencies found in a pre-license inspection of the Reykjavík manufacturing facility that ended in July 2025; the magazine noted that the facility remained approved for the products already on sale. In October 2026 the company said the FDA had closed its most recent inspection of the site in July 2026 with a “Voluntary Action Indicated” classification, and had approved a second drug-substance suite in Reykjavík, called DSM2, for SIMLANDI supply to the US. The same month it announced a long-term agreement for LOTTE Biologics to make drug substance for several of its biosimilars at a plant in Syracuse, New York.

Its website describes the Reykjavík plant in a supplier’s terms: it uses single-use technology there, it says, and is doubling its drug-product capacity while working to keep its facilities to the cGMP standards of the FDA and the European Medicines Agency. Its partners at the listing included STADA in Europe; for its aflibercept it works with Advanz Pharma, with which it announced an EMA submission for a high-dose aflibercept biosimilar in October 2026. In August 2026 it announced a licensing agreement with Lotus Pharmaceutical of Taiwan for proposed biosimilars to durvalumab and emicizumab in the US and selected Asian markets; Wikipedia records that Lotus, once part of Alvogen, was spun off in 2021 to a consortium that included Wessman’s investment fund Aztiq.

For a design guide, Alvotech shows a company whose brand is its factory and its pipeline rather than a shelf presence. Compare Sandoz, a biosimilar seller with its own name on the pack, and Formycon, another developer that works through partners. For this guide we use a fjord navy, a glacier white and a moss green with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Alvotech’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.