Novo Nordisk will invest $744 million to expand its clinical production facilities in a Copenhagen suburb.
Novo Nordisk is a Danish pharmaceutical company founded in 1923 to develop therapies for diabetes and other chronic diseases. As per the company, they have a workforce of over 49,000 people with a presence in 80 countries.
Novo stated that the funds will be used to construct a new factory to supply active therapeutic components for the company’s clinical studies and expand capacity for creating new oral and injectable medications.
Jesper Bving, SVP for manufacturing and development control at Novo stated:
“This initial investment in growing our clinical capacity at Bagsvaerd is a critical step to ensuring the continuing growth of our development pipeline”
Novo has prepared a deadline for the completion of the project by 2024. It is anticipated that this initiative will help create over 150 job opportunities. The development comes after almost a year after Novo decided to expand its facility in Kalundborg, Denmark spending 16.9 billion Danish kroner for expansion. This project, which is expected to be completed in 2027, would increase commercial capacity for manufacturing chemicals used in oral and injectable products.
The company, which is best known for its diabetic medications, sees its growth increasingly related to its weight-loss therapies. Novo said in March that it plans to increase the revenue generation from obesity medicines by three times by 2025. However, the business has struggled to meet the demand for its weight-loss injectable Wegovy, which was licensed in 2021.
The Bagsvaerd expansion appears unrelated to existing Wegovy supply concerns, which according to the company will be taken care of by year-end.
Karsten Knudsen, CFO of the company addressed the investors of the company stating:
“There are no guarantees in this effort, but we would not include this statement in our corporate release unless we’re sure that we’d be able to refill the US market with Wegovy in December.”
In a statement made by the head of rare diseases, Ludovic Helfgott, the company aims to have four production and filling facilities for weight reduction vials by the end of 2023.
Wegovy revenues fell 2% year on year in the third quarter, reaching 1.16 billion Danish kroner, or $160 million. In the first nine months of the year, sales of Wegovy and its previous weight-loss therapy Saxenda reached 11.38 billion Danish kroner. As per the goal set by the company, obesity medicine sales are expected to hit 25 billion Danish kroner by 2025.
Novo Nordisk has already increased its personnel. As of the end of September, the Danish Big Pharma employed about 52,700 employees, a 12% growth over the previous year, for which the business has credited to product supply, foreign operations, and R&D divisions.
Meanwhile, the company has signed several agreements to strengthen its preclinical and clinical pipelines this year. The three most notable partnerships are a collaboration with venture capital firm Flagship Pioneering for cardiometabolic and rare diseases, a $1 billion acquisition of sickle-cell disease-focused Forma Therapeutics, and a drug discovery collaboration with Microsoft.
