As Eli Lilly has surged to become the most valuable company in biopharma—with a market cap now more than twice that of powerhouse rival Johnson & Johnson largely thanks to its diabetes and weight loss franchise—the Indianapolis company has poured much of its revenue into new investment.
Wednesday, Lilly took another giant step in that endeavor, revealing that it will build a $4.5 billion R&D and manufacturing facility. Dubbed the Lilly Medicine Foundry, it will “drive innovation in drug production and make medicines for clinical trials,” the company said.
The foundry will add to the massive project Lilly is constructing 30 miles northeast of its headquarters in Lebanon, Indiana, at the LEAP Research and Innovation District. Lilly already has committed $9 billion to constructing an active pharmaceutical ingredient plant at the 600-acre campus that will produce its injected blockbuster diabetes and obesity drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound.
The announcement comes as Lilly and Danish rival Novo Nordisk scale up in an effort to meet the overwhelming demand for their GLP-1, blood sugar modulating products.
The foundry, which is scheduled to open in late 2027, will combine “research, manufacturing and the latest technology to innovate new production methods and scale global access to clinical supply” for its investigational drugs, Lilly said.
“As we accelerate our work to discover new medicines for the toughest diseases, we’re continuing to invest in state-of-the-art infrastructure to support our growing pipeline,” David Ricks, Lilly’s CEO, said in a release. “In addition to supplying high-quality medicine for our clinical studies, this new complex will further strengthen our process development and scale up our manufacturing capabilities to speed delivery of next-generation medicines to patients around the world.”
Lilly plans to house 400 employees at the new facility including engineers, scientists, operations personnel and lab technicians.
The foundry will have a flexible design, which will enable production of small molecules, biologics and nucleic acid therapies. Technologies developed there will be transferred to Lilly’s other manufacturing sites for full-scale production, the company said.
The investment brings Lilly’s outlay at the sprawling site to $13.5 billion. As sales of Mounjaro and Zepbound have skyrocketed, the company has upped its ante at the LEAP complex. It first announced plans in May 2022 to build a $2.1 billion API site there. When it broke ground for the project in April 2023, it revealed an additional $1.6 billion investment in the site. Then, five months ago, Lilly said it was pouring $5.3 billion more into the project.
Since 2020, the company has invested $23 billion in building facilities in the U.S., it said. That includes a $1.7 billion plant in the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina, which the company expects to become operational in 2027.
“This kind of investment will help the United States maintain leadership in advanced manufacturing and accelerate innovation,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. “It will complement the $51 million Tech Hubs investment the Biden-Harris administration announced in July to advance Central Indiana’s global leadership in biotechnology and biomanufacturing and strengthen the nation's biotechnology supply chain.”
Last month, Lilly revealed it was investing $1.8 billion to expand production capacity at two plants in Ireland. Lilly also has a $2.5 billion plant under construction in Alzey, Germany, which is expected to begin production in 2027.