Eli Lilly invests $450M to expand its North Carolina Research Triangle manufacturing site

After a busy year of manufacturing buildouts in 2022, Eli Lilly is already back at it with a $450 million investment. Lilly is planning to expand its facility in the Research Triangle in North Carolina, adding 100 new jobs at the facility, mainly manufacturing personnel.

The expansion, announced on Tuesday, is slated to be completed in 2027 and will add additional capacity for “parenteral filling” as well as more space for the assembly of devices and packaging capacity. Construction will begin this year, but no exact date has been set.

The expansion will also support and increase demand for its incretin products that help treat diabetes, Lilly said in a press release. However, there are no details on the size of the expansion. Endpoints News reached out for further comment but did not receive a response by press time.

Edgardo Hernandez

“Expanding our operations at Research Triangle Park will accelerate the rate at which we can produce medicines that patients rely on to address serious health challenges like diabetes. We’re on track to achieve the goal we shared in November 2022 of doubling incretin capacity by the end of this year, but this investment is key to ensuring even more patients will have access to medicines they need in the future,” Edgardo Hernandez, SVP and president of Lilly’s manufacturing operations, said in a statement.

Lilly’s site in Research Triangle Park has seen a lot of investment in the past few years, including a $1.7 billion expansion in 2020. According to NCbiotech.org, the site was initially meant to house more than 460 workers. Lilly has made North Carolina a major focus, with the Indianapolis pharma planning to invest $1 billion into its Concord, NC facility. It will focus on the manufacturing of injectables and medical devices.

Lilly’s emphasis on boosting manufacturing capacity is no secret. A report from SVB Securities from last November said that Lilly is expected to double the manufacturing capacity for the diabetes drug Mounjaro by the end of 2023, with some production for Mounjaro coming online before then. But Lilly did not disclose to SVB how Mounjaro’s demand compares with existing manufacturing capacity.

The Research Triangle itself is also a hotbed of manufacturing activity as well, with companies such as Catalent, Fujifilm, and Astellas starting or capping off multimillion-dollar projects in the area.

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