Novo Nordisk ($NVO), which just kicked off construction of a massive new plant in the U.S., says it also needs to expand further in Europe. The Denmark-based company will spend more than $110 million to build production facilities at its site in Chartres, France, adding 250 jobs in the process.
The drugmaker said the €100 million expansion will be at its existing 31,000-square-meter site in Chartres, where it currently produces drugs and its FlexPen injector. The project is expected to be complete in about three years, when 250 new workers will be brought on board, adding to the 1,100 employees currently working at the site, Novo said.
Over the last 15 years, Novo has invested more than €300 million in what Novo CEO Lars Rebien Sørensen referred to in a statement as “one of our most important strategic production sites.”
Novo has been expanding its production network globally in anticipation of significant growth in demand for its insulin and other products as a worldwide diabetes epidemic burgeons. Its largest market, accounting for more than half its sales, is the U.S. and last year the company announced plans for its first API plant there.
Novo Nordisk last month kicked off construction on the $1.8 billion, 833,000-square-foot project in Clayton, NC. The plant will sit adjacent to Novo's current manufacturing facilities in there: a 457,000-square-foot facility which handles formulation, filling and packaging of diabetes meds. When the new plant is complete, the company will add about 700 jobs to its site in Clayton. It will manufacture the active ingredients for a daily oral treatment for Type 2 diabetes, as well as other current and future Novo insulin products.
The Clayton buildup is part of $2 billion expansion the drugmaker announced in August, which included a new production facility in Måløv, Denmark. That facility will handle tableting and packaging of the oral diabetes med as well as other oral meds Novo develops. The $200 million investment in Måløv will create 100 new jobs there. It also opened a plant in Russia last year and is considering building a facility in Iran.
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