By Patrick Wingrove
(Reuters) – Eli Lilly said on Friday it has invested another $5.3 billion in its new Lebanon, Indiana manufacturing plant, more than doubling its previous investment, as it scrambles to meet soaring demand for its weight-loss and diabetes drugs.
The new investment, which brings the total to $9 billion, will help boost production of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) for Lilly’s powerful weight-loss drug Zepbound and diabetes treatment Mounjaro, the company said.
“Today’s announcement tops the largest manufacturing investment in our company’s history and, we believe, represents the single largest investment in synthetic medicine API manufacturing in U.S. history,” said Lilly CEO David Ricks.
The Indianapolis-based company expects supply of Zepbound to remain “quite tight” in the near and midterm as it ramps up capacity, it said on an investor call last month.
Lilly has committed a total of $16 billion to building new manufacturing sites since 2020, including $2.5 billion for a plant in Germany, and another $1.2 billion to update existing facilities, it said.
The company last month announced it will acquire a manufacturing facility from Nexus Pharmaceuticals to produce injectable medicines.
(Reporting by Patrick Wingrove; Editing by Frances Kerry)
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