It seems like GLP-1 giants Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly are locked in a fierce battle as they work towards scaling production to meet the sky-high demand for their obesity medications. The Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk said that it would spend $4.1 billion to build a second fill-finish factory at its large site in Clayton, North Carolina.
It has been one month since Lilly announced a $5.3 billion investment to enhance its production capacity, and now Novo has responded.
According to Novo, the location will have a floor area equivalent to the combined floor space of Novo’s three existing production facilities in the state—1.4 million square feet.
Novo will manufacture the blood sugar-regulating medication Ozempic for diabetes, along with Wegovy for obesity, at the new factory. This project is part of Novo’s anticipated $6.8 billion investment in manufacturing this year, an increase from nearly $4 billion in 2023.
Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen, CEO of Novo, remarked, “This is yet another real signal of our efforts to scale up our production to meet the growing global need for our life-changing medicines.”
As a result of the development, Novo intends to hire 1,000 additional employees, increasing their current workforce of 2,500 in the state. Additionally, Novo said the building project would result in the employment of up to 2,000 contractors. Work has already begun on clearing and laying the foundation. The various phases of construction will be completed between 2027 and 2029.
In March 2023, Novo created space for expansion by acquiring 104 acres next to its campus in Clayton for $6.8 million, without disclosing any building intentions at that time.
Novo is reportedly constructing the site to be environmentally friendly, with innovative water methods and a roof covered in solar panels.
Novo commenced operations in Clayton in 1993, and through numerous expansions, the company extended its initial factory on the site to a total area of 457,000 square feet. When it went online in 2021, the company’s second factory at the location was the biggest life science project ever undertaken in North Carolina, with a total cost of $2 billion. This factory was Novo’s first outside Denmark to create active pharmaceutical ingredients.
In 2022, the company expanded to a 180,000-square-foot facility in Durham, North Carolina, 40 miles northeast of Clayton. Its oral semaglutide product, Rybelsus, is developed there. Novo acquired the factory in 2019 from Purdue Pharma.
Novo has production facilities in Denmark, the U.S., China, Brazil, and France, and its manufacturing unit employs up to 20,000 people. The firm’s parent company, Novo Holdings, paid over $16 billion to acquire CDMO giant Catalent in an attempt to increase manufacturing capacity. As part of the transaction, Novo Nordisk will acquire three fill-finish facilities for $11 billion.
