Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk invests $4bn to increase US manufacturing

Novo Nordisk is to take a position greater than $4bn (£3.2bn) in US manufacturing because it battles to maintain up with booming demand for its weight problems and diabetes medication Wegovy and Ozempic.

Denmark’s greatest pharmaceutical firm stated it will spend $4.1bn constructing a second filling and ending facility in Clayton, North Carolina, one of many greatest manufacturing investments in its historical past. Its medication are injected by customers as soon as per week, and are available pre-filled pens.

The brand new facility, which could have roof-top photo voltaic panels, will double the house of Novo Nordisk’s three current amenities in North Carolina, and add 1,000 new jobs, on high of the practically 2,500 people who find themselves already working for the drugmaker within the state.

“It took us a century to achieve 40 million sufferers, however by way of this growth and continued funding in our world manufacturing, we’re constructing Novo Nordisk’s capacity to serve tens of millions extra folks dwelling with severe persistent illnesses sooner or later,” stated the Novo Nordisk president and chief government, Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen.

“That is yet one more actual sign of our efforts to scale up our manufacturing to satisfy the rising world want for our life-changing medicines and the sufferers of tomorrow.”

Total, Novo Nordisk plans to take a position $6.8bn in manufacturing this 12 months in contrast with $3.9bn final 12 months, to extend provide of its injectable medication.

Wegovy and Ozempic have turn into massively widespread amid an weight problems disaster in lots of nations, which led to shortages and the corporate rationing the usage of them. The medicines have been endorsed by celebrities comparable to Oprah Winfrey and Elon Musk, though others such because the US comic Amy Schumer have stated they stopped taking Ozempic due to the side-effects.

The success of its medication has led to an 84% surge in Novo Nordisk shares up to now 12 months, making it Europe’s most respected firm and making its market greater than all the Danish financial system.

Henrik Wulff, the agency’s government vice-president for product provide, high quality and IT, stated: “Clayton was the primary manufacturing web site for Novo Nordisk within the US, and this new, large-scale funding confirms the continued significance of our manufacturing amenities there as cornerstones of our firm’s development.”

Wegovy and Ozempic are a part of a brand new class of weight-loss and diabetes medication generally known as GLP-1, which mimic the motion of a intestine hormone and suppress folks’s urge for food. They’ve helped some folks lose significant amounts of weight however can cause unpleasant side-effects such as nausea.

Novo Nordisk and its major competitor, the US drugmaker Eli Lilly, raised their sales forecasts final month. Eli Lilly’s diabetes therapy tirzepatide, marketed as Mounjaro, was approved for obesity at first of this month, giving sufferers and docs what the medical regulator stated is a simpler different to semaglutide, higher generally known as Wegovy.