North Carolina has proved an attractive destination for biopharma companies large and small in recent years, ginning up investments and site commitments from the likes of Eli Lilly, Fujifilm Diosynth, Thermo Fisher, Amgen and other drugmakers.
Now, Japan’s Kyowa Kirin is getting in on the action.
Kyowa Kirin is investing $200 million to stand up a biologics manufacturing “center of excellence” in Sanford, North Carolina, where it plans to enlist 102 new staffers, according to a recent release from the state.
The company aims to purchase land in NC’s new Helix Innovation Park, where it will build a factory centered on targeted clinical and commercial biologic therapies. Kyowa Kirin expects to wrap up the project in four years, according to the release.
Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, Kyowa Kirin currently operates three sites in North America—two in the U.S. and one in Canada. The company’s site in Vancouver covers commercial and corporate operations, while its facility in Princeton, New Jersey, hosts clinical development, supply chain and quality teams. Kyowa Kirin’s site in La Jolla, California, for its part, dabbles in research, discovery and open innovation.
The drugmaker is just one of many biopharma outfits to set up shop in the Tar Heel State in recent years.
Last month, for instance, San Diego-based manufacturer National Resilience said it would expand its rapid transfer port in North Carolina. Resilience’s site in Durham, North Carolina, mainly focuses on gene therapies and has about 45,000 square feet of available space for production expansion, the company said at the time.
And late last year, contract manufacturer Fujifilm Diosynth said it had lined up its first client—Johnson & Johnson—at an upcoming biomanufacturing plant in Holly Springs, NC, which is expected to kick off operations in full in 2025. Fujifilm started work on the $2 billion facility back in 2021.
Eli Lilly is also underway with a large project in Concord, where it's building an advanced plant to make injectables. The site will eventually employ 600 people, according to Eli Lilly.