Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly & Co. is expanding its spend when it comes to investing in its Indiana manufacturing footprint, with an additional $4.5 billion to ensure it can meet growing demand for its genetic therapies and weight-loss drugs.
Two of the company’s three Lebanon, Indiana manufacturing sites will benefit from this investment, which will bring the total capital expansion commitments to its Indiana operations over the last six years to more than $21 billion.
Since September, more than $16 billion has been committed to the construction of three facilities that will make injectable or oral weight- loss treatments in Texas, Alabama, and Pennsylvania. The plan with the Indiana investment is to add new process designs and technologies to its active pharmaceutical ingredient factory, which is set to open next year. According to a news release, this includes the ability to produce its first FDA-approved, once-daily pill for weight loss, Foundayo. The Indianapolis-based company also plans to expand its newly opened advanced therapies facility.
Lilly said it moved forward with the additional Lebanon investment due to its “evolving pipeline” and “anticipated demand for its medicines.”
Once completed, Lilly Lebanon API will make the injectable medications Zepbound and Mounjaro for weight management and type-2 diabetes, respectively, according to a news release. It will also produce Foundayo and retatrutide, a triple hormone receptor agonist in late-stage development that targets obesity and cardiometabolic disease.
“It will be the largest API production site in U.S. history,” Lilly CEO David Ricks said in a statement.
Beyond API, the newly opened Lilly Lebanon Advanced Therapies facility will support clinical and commercial production of therapies that “target disease at the genetic level,” the company said.
The Lilly Medicine Foundry, a manufacturing, research, and development centre focused on scaling medicine production, is set to open next year, to be located at Indiana’s LEAP Innovation and Research District, a 9,000-plus acre economic development project.
