With $10 billion earmarked to grow its U.S. operations through 2035, AbbVie continues to lay out the particulars on its decade-long domestic investment strategy.
The Chicago-area Big Pharma has kicked off work on a $70 million expansion of its bioresearch center in Worcester, Massachusetts, where the company conducts both manufacturing and R&D for biologic medicines.
The project, which falls under the banner of AbbVie’s broader U.S. investment announced in April, will beef up capacity at the Worcester site that AbbVie plans to use for local production of current and upcoming drugs in cancer and immunology, according to a Sept. 30 press release.
AbbVie is specifically building out additional biologics manufacturing areas at the site, as well as a new three-story building that will contain a laboratory, warehouse and office space. The company said it expects the project to hasten the production transfer of certain oncology meds from Europe to the U.S.
The Worcester expansion will also create new jobs at the site, although AbbVie did not specify how many. The company currently employs about 28,000 people in the U.S., including more than 2,000 in Massachusetts alone.
"This investment will further expand AbbVie's biologics manufacturing capacity and position [the AbbVie bioresearch center] to build upon its impressive track record of developing, manufacturing and launching next-generation complex biologic medicines that improve the lives of millions of patients worldwide,” Azita Saleki-Gerhardt, Ph.D., AbbVie’s chief operations officer, said in a statement.
AbbVie first telegraphed its broader U.S. investment plans in late April, joining a slew of drugmakers that have pledged to upgrade their domestic production presence in light of pharmaceutical tariff threats from the Trump administration.
At the time, Scott Reents, AbbVie’s chief financial officer, said on a conference call that the company would use its $10 billion U.S. investment to build four new production plants focused on active pharmaceutical ingredients, drug product, peptides and devices.
Aside from the Worcester project, AbbVie in August unveiled designs on a $195 million API facility in its native North Chicago. The upcoming plant will support manufacturing of ingredients for current and next-gen therapies in neuroscience, immunology and oncology, AbbVie said earlier this summer.
The company announced that it broke ground on the new API facility Monday.
The administration’s drug tariff plan finally came into focus last week—albeit through a social media post—when President Donald Trump revealed that starting Oct. 1, any drugmaker that isn’t actively building a facility in the U.S. will see their imported, branded products subjected to a 100% tax.
The deal appears to exclude generic drugs and does not apply to companies in the EU or Japan, where the U.S. has struck separate trade deals capping tariffs on many products—including pharmaceuticals—at 15%. Those deals also largely exempt generic drugs from the administration’s trade duties.