Eli Lilly will spend $3 billion to expand a manufacturing facility in Wisconsin it bought in April, adding new capabilities to produce injectable medicines like its fast-selling weight loss and diabetes drugs Zepbound and Mounjaro, the company said late last week.
The expansion of the Kenosha County facility will be Lilly’s “single largest U.S. manufacturing investment” outside of its home state of Indiana, Edgardo Hernandez, head of the company’s manufacturing operations, said in a statement.
Lilly will acquire additional land and an adjacent warehouse in the deal, which will add 750 employees to the 100 already working at the facility. Another 2,000 people will be involved in the construction of the plant , the company said.
Once operational, the larger facility will produce medicines in several therapeutic areas, assemble injection devices and package products for patient use, Lilly said.
The move is part of a “historic” manufacturing push that has seen Lilly commit to spending $23 billion on drug production since 2020. The key driver behind that initiative has been the surging popularity of so-called GLP-1 drugs, which are approved to treat diabetes and obesity and are being tested in a range of other related health conditions. Wall Street analysts believe the market for GLP-1 therapies, like Zepbound and Mounjaro, will top $100 billion annually by the next decade.
Demand for Lilly’s drugs, as well as Novo Nordisk’s rival Wegovy and Ozempic, has outpaced supply, leading to shortages and heavy manufacturing investments by both companies. Novo, for instance, gained three facilities through the $16.5 billion buyout of the contract manufacturing company Catalent by its controlling shareholder, Novo Holdings. It also spent $4.1 billion on a facility in North Carolina in June and acquired another plant in the Czech Republic last week.
The shortages of Novo and Lilly’s therapies have created opportunities for compounders to offer copycat versions, and a legal tussle between those companies and the Food and Drug Administration. The two sides are due back in court on Dec. 19.
