Photo: Novo Nordisk California Office/iStock, Hapa Bapa
Novo Nordisk on Monday announced plans to pump $4.1 billion into its U.S. manufacturing site to boost production capacity for current and future injectable drugs for obesity and other chronic conditions.
Monday’s multibillion-dollar investment, which the drugmaker said is “one of the largest manufacturing investments in Novo Nordisk’s history,” will fund the construction of a second fill-and-finish facility in Clayton, North Carolina.
The new facility will add 1.4 million square feet of Novo’s U.S. manufacturing space, doubling the size of its three existing locations in North Carolina combined. The new fill and finish plant will be capable of aseptic manufacturing and finishing production processes and will create 1,000 new jobs in the state.
Monday’s investment comes in line with Novo’s plans to increase production investments to $6.8 billion in 2024 from $3.9 billion last year.
Novo CEO Lars Fruagaard Jorgensen in a statement called Monday’s investment “another real signal of the company’s efforts to scale up production to meet growing global demand for life-changing medicines.”
The North Carolina facility is expected to be completed between 2027 and 2029, and construction will employ approximately 2,000 outside contractors. Ground breaking and foundation work for the factory has already begun.
Monday’s $4.1 billion investment is the latest development in Novo’s efforts in recent months to expand manufacturing capacity and meet insatiable market demand for its blockbuster GLP-1 receptor agonist semaglutide, sold as the type 2 diabetes treatment Ozempic and the chronic weight-management treatment Wegobee.
Novo said in November 2023 that it would invest $6 billion in its Danish operations, primarily to meet current and future demand for its medicines. The company began investing last year with a $3.6 billion capital tranche, with the remaining amount to be raised over the next six years.
In February 2024, Novo’s parent company, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, acquired CDMO giant Catalent for $16.5 billion. Novo Holdings, the foundation’s investment arm, then announced it would sell three of Catalent’s fill-finish facilities to the pharmaceutical company.
A month later, Novo announced a $556 million investment in China to help build a sterile drug manufacturing plant to boost supplies.
Tristan Manalac is an independent science writer based in Metro Manila, Philippines. Connect with him on LinkedIn or email him at tristan@tristanmanalac.com or tristan.manalac@biospace.com.
