Novo Nordisk announced plans to build a $4.1 billion facility in North Carolina on Monday as demand for its popular weight-loss drugs has only increased in recent months.
The plant will be the Danish company's second fill and finish manufacturing facility in Clayton, NC, and the fourth facility in the entire area.
Novo Nordisk – known for weight loss and diabetes drugs Wegovy and Ozempic – said the new factory would expand more than 56 hectares and add 1.4 million square meters of manufacturing space, doubling the combined square footage of the other three facilities in North Carolina.
The life science investment is the largest in the history of the state, Novo Nordisk said. The company said it expects to create 1,000 new jobs, adding to the 2,500 in the region.
Construction of the facility will be completed gradually between 2027 and 2029, the company said, and “early site clearance and foundation work is already underway.”
The goal, according to Novo Nordisk's press release, is to expand the company's ability “to produce current and future injectable treatments for people with obesity and other serious chronic diseases.”
“It took us a century to reach 40 million patients, but through this expansion and continued investment in our global manufacturing, we are building Novo Nordisk's ability to help millions more people living with serious chronic diseases in the future,” Novo Nordisk president and CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen said in the press release. “This is another true signal of our efforts to scale up our manufacturing to meet the growing global need for our life-changing medicines and the patients of tomorrow.”
