Zippound injection pen, Eli Lilly's weight-loss drug, is on display in New York City on December 11, 2023.
Brendan McDiarmid | Reuters
Eli Lilly The Indiana company said Friday it is investing another $5.3 billion in a manufacturing plant in Lebanon, Indiana, to boost supply of the popular weight loss drug Zibbond, the diabetes treatment Monjaro and other drugs.
Demand for these treatments has far exceeded supply over the past year, leading to shortages in the United States and forcing the pharmaceutical giant to invest heavily to expand its manufacturing.
This new commitment brings Eli Lilly's total investment in the site to $9 billion. This makes it Eli Lilly's largest industrial investment in its nearly 150-year history, CEO David Rex said in a statement.
Eli Lilly expects the Lebanon site to begin manufacturing drugs at the end of 2026, and expand operations through 2028. The company first announced its plans to build new sites in Indiana in 2022.
The plant will increase Eli Lilly's capacity to manufacture the active ingredient in Zepbound and Mounjaro, called tirzepatide. The company refers to these treatments as incretin drugs, which mimic certain gut hormones to suppress a person's appetite and regulate blood sugar.
“This multi-site campus will manufacture our newest medicines, including Zepbound and Mounjaro, supporting pipeline growth and leveraging the latest technology and automation to maximize efficiency, safety and quality control,” Rex said in a statement.
Eli Lilly said 900 employees, including engineers, scientists, operating staff and laboratory technicians, will work at the site when it is fully operational.
The company has spent more than $18 billion to build, expand and purchase factories in the United States and Europe since 2020.
Eli Lilly has several manufacturing sites either “under construction or under construction,” CFO Anat Ashkenazi told investors during an earnings call last month. This includes the Lebanon plant, another site in Indiana, two sites in North Carolina, one in Ireland, one in Germany, and a seventh site that the company recently acquired from Nexus Pharmaceuticals.
Investors cheered Eli Lilly after the company raised its full-year revenue forecast by $2 billion, partly on confidence in ramping up production of Zepbound, Mounjaro and other incretin drugs for the rest of the year.
“Now that we're four months into the year, we have more visibility into that, into those capability points and we feel more confident,” Ashkenazi said during the call.
