These days, with its revenue booming and a market cap swelling to twice the size of any other pharma company in the U.S., Eli Lilly is doing everything in a big way.
One piece of the puzzle that didn’t seem to fit for the Indianapolis drugmaker came in April when it purchased a manufacturing facility in Kenosha, Wisconsin, from Nexus Pharmaceuticals for an undisclosed sum. A securities filing later revealed that Lilly spent $925 million for the facility. Now, eight months after the purchase, Lilly has upped its ante there with another prodigious investment.
Lilly said Thursday that it will plunk down $3 billion to expand the plant which will produce injectable treatments, including its top-selling diabetes and obesity drugs. Additionally, the plant will perform device assembly and packaging of medicines across “multiple therapeutic areas,” Lilly said.
Construction begins next year on the 84,000-square-foot facility, which will house an additional 750 staffers on top of the staff of 100 currently employed at the plant. New jobs at the factory will include operators, technicians, engineers and scientists. Lilly expects the project also will employ more than 2,000 construction workers.
“Today’s announcement represents our single largest U.S. manufacturing investment outside our home state of Indiana and will add to our ability to expand capacity to make both our existing and future pipeline of medicines,” Edgardo Hernandez, president of Lilly’s manufacturing operations, said in a release.
Lilly announced the investment Thursday afternoon in Kenosha with a press conference that included CEO David Ricks and local government and business leaders.
The facility will feature advanced automation including guided vehicles, robotics and production equipment, Lilly said. Digital automation will be embedded throughout the site to accelerate processes and increase accuracy, the company added.
The investment comes on top of another related purchase the company made a month ago of a vacant, newly built, 324,000-square-foot industrial building on 31 acres in Kenosha for $40.8 million.
The acquisitions, expansion of facilities and additional purchases of land bring Lilly’s total investment in Wisconsin to $4 billion, the company said. It added that since 2020, it has designated more than $23 billion to expand its manufacturing capacity worldwide.
In October, the company revealed a $4.5 billion investment in an R&D and manufacturing facility in Indiana which it has dubbed the Lilly Medicine Foundry. The complex will add to the massive project Lilly is constructing in Lebanon, Indiana. The company already had committed $9 billion to build an active pharmaceutical ingredient plant at the sprawling site that will produce its injected blockbuster diabetes and obesity drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound.
Also in the works is a $1.7 billion plant under construction in the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina, which the company expects to become operational in 2027.
In September, 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.
The company is rapidly expanding its capacity to meet the growing demand for Mounjaro and Zepbound. The blood-sugar-modulating drugs combined for sales of $4.4 billion in the third quarter, compared to the $6.8 billion Lilly’s rival Novo Nordisk reported for sales of its counterpart treatments Ozempic and Wegovy.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The price Lilly paid for Nexus Pharmaceuticals' plant in Kenosha has been corrected.