Eli Lilly invests to increase Mounjaro, Zepbound supply

Eli Lilly on Friday stated it’s investing one other $5.3 billion in a producing plant in Lebanon, Indiana, to spice up provide of its extremely well-liked weight reduction drug Zepbound, diabetes therapy Mounjaro and different medicines.

Demand for these remedies has far outpaced provide over the previous yr, spurring shortages within the U.S. and forcing the pharmaceutical big to speculate closely to scale up its manufacturing.

That new dedication brings Eli Lilly’s complete funding on the website to $9 billion. That makes it Eli Lilly’s largest manufacturing funding in its almost 150-year historical past, the corporate’s CEO David Ricks stated in an announcement.

Eli Lilly expects the Lebanon website to begin making medicines towards the tip of 2026, and scale up operations by means of 2028. The corporate first introduced its plans to construct new Indiana websites in 2022. 

The plant will particularly improve Eli Lilly’s capability to fabricate the energetic ingredient in Zepbound and Mounjaro, referred to as tirzepatide. The corporate refers to these remedies as incretin medicine, which mimic sure intestine hormones to suppress an individual’s urge for food and regulate blood sugar. 

“This multi-site campus will make our newest medicines, together with Zepbound and Mounjaro, help pipeline progress and leverage the most recent expertise and automation for max effectivity, security and high quality management,” Ricks stated in an announcement.

Eli Lilly stated 900 workers, together with engineers, scientists, working personnel and lab technicians, will employees the location when it’s absolutely operational.

The corporate has spent greater than $18 billion to construct, increase and buy manufacturing vegetation within the U.S. and Europe since 2020.

Eli Lilly has a number of manufacturing websites both “ramping up or beneath development,” Chief Monetary Officer Anat Ashkenazi instructed traders throughout an earnings name final month. That features the Lebanon plant and one other Indiana website, two places in North Carolina, one in Eire, one in Germany and a seventh website the corporate just lately acquired from Nexus Prescription drugs. 

Traders cheered Eli Lilly after the corporate hiked its full-year income outlook by $2 billion, partly because of confidence about elevated manufacturing of Zepbound, Mounjaro and different incretin medicine for the remainder of the yr.

“Now that we’re 4 months into the yr, we have now larger visibility into that, into these nodes of capability and really feel extra assured,” Ashkenazi stated in the course of the name.