Eli Lilly has doubled down on its partnership with CDMO Resilience as the companies embark on a $750 million investment to increase production of Lilly’s KwikPen injectable device for its diabetes and obesity medicines.
The investment will fund upgrades to Resilience’s site in Ohio, which has been manufacturing Mounjaro and Zepbound since the companies first teamed up in 2023. The outlay will create at least 400 new jobs at the site, bringing Resilience’s headcount in the Buckeye State to more than 1,400, the company said in a July 30 release.
Resilience, which was formerly known as National Resilience, recently moved its headquarters from San Diego to Blue Ash, Ohio, which is 15 miles northeast of Cincinnati. The company operates two advanced manufacturing facilities in the Cincinnati region, as well, which collectively occupy some 1 million square feet.
Resilience recently achieved a milestone having produced 150 million doses of Lilly medicines in vial and pre-filled syringe formats. Full operations from the upgrade, focused on Lilly's KwikPen prefilled injector, are expected to commence in 2027.
“Our investment reflects our long-term commitment to building one of the largest and most advanced sterile injectable and device assembly and packaging operations in the United States,” Resilience CEO William Marth, said in a statement.
In 2024, Resilience unveiled a plan to spend $225 million to upgrade two of its plants, including the Ohio facility. At that time, the company was running three high-speed fill lines for vials, cartridges and prefilled syringes, with plans to have a fourth line operational by last year.
Resilience launched as an ambitious startup in 2020 with an $800 million investment and a goal to become the “world's most advanced biopharmaceutical manufacturing ecosystem.” By the end of 2021, Resilience had drawn additional investment rounds of $625 million and $600 million. And in 2023, the company secured a $410 million loan from the Department of Defense.
But Resilience and its investors misjudged the trajectory of the biotech and CDMO industries. In June of last year, the company said it was consolidating its operations, shutting down six of its 10 sites, including three in Massachusetts, two in California and one in Florida. The company said the sites were “not being fully utilized.”
In October of 2025, Resilience sold its gene therapy manufacturing facility in Durham, North Carolina, to OXB for $4.5 million. Nine months earlier, the company had already laid off 120 at the site, which it gained for $110 million as part of a 2021 partnership with gene therapy specialist bluebird bio.
The purges have left Resilience with manufacturing facilities in Toronto and Philadelphia, in addition to its two outlets in Ohio.
Meanwhile, the already immense demand for Lilly's injected diabetes and obesity drugs is likely to increase in the near future should the company gain approval for its investigational triple-action agonist retatrutide, which is expected next year. The first-of-its-kind therapy has made waves in clinical trials, providing up to 28.3% weight loss in obesity patients.