An injection pen of Zepbound, Eli Lilly’s weight reduction drug, is displayed in Recent York City on Dec. 11, 2023.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Eli Lilly on Friday said it’s investing one other $5.3 billion in a manufacturing plant in Lebanon, Indiana, to spice up supply of its highly popular weight reduction drug Zepbound, diabetes treatment Mounjaro and other medicines.
Demand for those treatments has far outpaced supply over the past yr, spurring shortages within the U.S. and forcing the pharmaceutical giant to take a position heavily to scale up its manufacturing.
That latest commitment brings Eli Lilly’s total investment at the positioning to $9 billion. That makes it Eli Lilly’s largest manufacturing investment in its nearly 150-year history, the corporate’s CEO David Ricks said in a press release.
Eli Lilly expects the Lebanon site to start out making medicines toward the tip of 2026, and scale up operations through 2028. The corporate first announced its plans to construct latest Indiana sites in 2022.
The plant will specifically increase Eli Lilly’s capability to fabricate the energetic ingredient in Zepbound and Mounjaro, called tirzepatide. The corporate refers to those treatments as incretin drugs, which mimic certain gut hormones to suppress an individual’s appetite and regulate blood sugar.
“This multi-site campus will make our latest medicines, including Zepbound and Mounjaro, support pipeline growth and leverage the newest technology and automation for max efficiency, safety and quality control,” Ricks said in a press release.
Eli Lilly said 900 employees, including engineers, scientists, operating personnel and lab technicians, will staff the positioning when it’s fully operational.
The corporate has spent greater than $18 billion to construct, expand and buy manufacturing plants within the U.S. and Europe since 2020.
Eli Lilly has several manufacturing sites either “ramping up or under construction,” Chief Financial Officer Anat Ashkenazi told investors during an earnings call last month. That features the Lebanon plant and one other Indiana site, two locations in North Carolina, one in Ireland, one in Germany and a seventh site the corporate recently acquired from Nexus Pharmaceuticals.
Investors cheered Eli Lilly after the corporate hiked its full-year revenue outlook by $2 billion, partly resulting from confidence about increased production of Zepbound, Mounjaro and other incretin drugs for the remainder of the yr.
“Now that we’re 4 months into the yr, now we have greater visibility into that, into these nodes of capability and feel more confident,” Ashkenazi said in the course of the call.
