After topping up its long-running operations in Puerto Rico with plans for a $650 million investment last year, Amgen is infusing several hundred million dollars more into the U.S. territory.
Amgen is plugging an additional $300 million into the expansion at its Juncos site in Puerto Rico, which was established in 1992 and forms a critical piece of the drugmaker’s global production network, serving more than 60 countries around the world.
With the upgraded investment, Amgen’s total pledges to its U.S. operations over the past year are now approaching $2 billion, the company noted in a May 4 release.
In late September, the company said it would soup up the Juncos site to increase biologics production and add hundreds of new jobs. As of 2022, the site comprised more than 20 buildings and staffed thousands of employees, per Amgen’s website.
The move came amid an outpouring of U.S. financial commitments from the industry, as drugmakers sought to navigate murky—and at times conflicting—import tariff policy proposals from the U.S. government.
Amgen is among the 17 large pharmaceutical companies to ink “most favored nation” drug pricing deals with the White House, which also confer temporary relief from the Trump administration’s pharmaceutical tariffs. The President announced in early April that he would impose 100% tariffs on certain patented drug products imported from outside the U.S., with plenty of carveouts to sidestep the duties, including country-specific trade deals like those with the EU, Japan and the U.K., alongside the industry’s MFN agreements.
“Amgen has been a leader in U.S. biomanufacturing for decades, and this expansion reflects our continued commitment to American manufacturing,” Amgen CEO Robert Bradway said in a statement Monday. “By growing our operations in Puerto Rico, we are ensuring patients have access to the medicines they need, investing in the long-term strength of our domestic supply chain and supporting American jobs.”
With the new $300 million outlay, the company did not suggest a change in strategy or any adjustments to the hiring plans it unveiled with the original project.
In its release Monday, the company noted that the expansion of the Puerto Rico biologics plant will strengthen “existing advanced manufacturing roles” and support workforce development in the region, while also creating hundreds of construction jobs during the buildout.
Apart from the nearly $1 billion Amgen has committed to the Juncos site, the company has, since last year, drafted designs on a $900 million expansion of its biomanufacturing plant in central Ohio and is also building a $600 million R&D center in Thousand Oaks, California—where its headquarters is located—to house researchers and accelerate next-generation drug discovery.
The company has said that the new Thousand Oaks site will generate hundreds of new U.S. jobs.
As Amgen makes amendments to its U.S. investment plan, some of its peers are coming to the end of the planning stage for their U.S. expansion projects.
Last week, Novartis put down blueprints for a new active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) facility in Morrisville, North Carolina.
Alongside other sites underway in the Tar Heel State, plus new or growing radioligand cancer therapy plants in Texas, Florida, California, Indiana and New Jersey, the Morrisville project marks the 7th and final facility the company will build as part of its $23 billion U.S. investment agenda, Novartis said.