Amid a flurry of manufacturing activity in the state this year, Amgen is the latest drugmaker to bolster its production footprint in North Carolina.
Amgen is laying out $1 billion to build a second drug substance facility in Holly Springs, North Carolina, the company said Thursday morning.
Following a prior investment of $550 million, the latest project brings Amgen’s total planned investment in the area to more than $1.5 billion, the company noted in a release.
The plant will incorporate both current technology and sustainable practices. Together with Amgen’s existing facility, the company’s investments in Holly Springs are slated to create a total of 370 new jobs, Amgen added.
"North Carolina will be an important part of our global manufacturing network as we continue to meet the growing demand for our innovative therapies while generating significant local economic impact,” the drugmaker’s CEO, Robert Bradway, said in a statement.
In recent years, North Carolina has become a biopharma hotspot, and 2024 has seen a string of high-profile outlays in the state.
Earlier this week, over-the-counter drug juggernaut Reckitt said it would spend 155 million pounds sterling ($200 million) to expand its facility in North Carolina in a move that will create the company’s largest OTC production facility in the U.S. The project is expected to create as many as 300 jobs, the company pointed out.
Prior to that, Johnson & Johnson in October unveiled blueprints for a $2 billion biologics plant in the state. The up-and-coming facility will be used to crank out treatments across oncology, immunology and neuroscience.
Construction on that plant is expected to kick off in the first half of 2025, with J&J aiming to recruit a total workforce of 420 once the facility is fully operational.
In Holly Spring specifically, CDMO Fujifilm Diosynth is building a $1.2 billion site, and CSL Seqirus already operates a massive vaccine plant in the city.
Still, it hasn’t all been positive in North Carolina as of late.
Following flooding caused by Hurricane Helene, Baxter International—the country’s top supplier of IV fluids—had to temporarily shut down its sprawling facility in Marion, NC.
Baxter has been working throughout the year to get the plant back in working order and ensure it can ship IV supplies out to its customers.
Elsewhere, Pfizer this fall said it would lay off 75 employees in Sanford, citing lackluster results from a recent trial of its gene therapy candidate in Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The latest round of cuts follows 150 layoffs in Sanford earlier this year, which Pfizer also attributed to the trial flop.