Even as supplies of Novo Nordisk’s immensely popular GLP-1 drugs Ozempic and Wegovy start to stabilize, the Danish drugmaker continues to announce manufacturing and capacity upgrades at a rapid clip.
Novo Nordisk Pharmatech, a unit that specializes in producing drug ingredients, is spending 1.5 billion Danish kroner ($220 million) to build a plant in Køge, Denmark, that will make raw materials, the company said in a release.
The project will result in the creation of 50 new jobs, according to the company. Novo Nordisk Pharmatech expects the plant to be complete by 2027.
The 8,000-square-meter (roughly 86,000-square-foot) facility will include production, storage, office and laboratory space, Pharmatech said, adding that the outlay marks the biggest investment in its 75-year history.
In its release, Pharmatech said that the site will primarily be used to churn out raw materials for Novo's roster of medicines against chronic diseases.
Novo's latest expansion announcement comes amid the company's long-running push to add GLP-1 production capacity around the globe. In the U.S., the company in June revealed that it will spend a staggering $4.1 billion to build out a second fill-finish plant at is campus in Clayton, North Carolina.
The new facility will total 1.4 million square feet, matching the combined floor space of Novo’s three current manufacturing sites in the state, the company said at the time.
Over in Novo’s home country of Denmark, the company last year devoted more than 42 billion Danish kroner ($6 billion) to expand its existing production facilities in the city of Kalundborg.
At the time, the company noted that the vast majority of the investment would fuel a capacity boost for active pharmaceutical ingredients, including the semaglutide used in the diabetes med Ozempic and its obesity counterpart Wegovy.
The Kalundborg outlay will help with construction of a new 170,000-square-meter (1.83 million-square-foot) API plant. Work on the project started last year, with Novo expecting to gradually finalize construction from the end of 2025 through 2029.
Meanwhile, Novo late last month purchased a 200-acre site in Odense, Denmark’s third largest city, where Reuters reported that the company would kick off preparatory excavation work for a potential new production plant.
Financial details around the land purchase were not revealed, and Novo did not specify what the new location would be used for, though an environmental report submitted in January suggests the site could be used for fill-finish production, Reuters said at the time.
"With the political processes and approvals in place, we are pleased to announce that Novo Nordisk is now the owner of the site in Tietgenbyen in Odense," a company spokesperson told Fierce Pharma in July. She suggested Novo would make a final determination on the purpose of the site by year-end once the company has wrapped up an internal review process.