AstraZeneca has broken ground on a $4.5 billion manufacturing facility near Charlottesville, Virginia, confirming a report about its location six weeks ago when state lawmakers approved an economic development package for the project.
The company has added an additional $500 million to its original planned investment in the site, which will manufacture active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) for the production of weight management, metabolic and cardiovascular treatments, along with drugs from AZ's growing antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) portfolio.
AZ plans to create 600 full-time roles at the site, plus an additional 3,000 jobs during construction of the facility, according to an Oct. 9 press release. The company expects the plant to come online in the next four to five years.
“With our $4.5 billion investment in Virginia, the largest in AstraZeneca’s history, we are not only building a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility, but also driving life sciences innovation and economic growth,” Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca's CEO, said in a release.
The news comes on the heels of AZ's announcement in Washington, D.C. earlier this year that it had selected Virginia as the location of the facility, and that the outlay was part of the company’s plan to invest $50 billion in the U.S. through 2030.
In addition to establishing the Virginia site, AZ plans to use the U.S. outlay to expand its R&D facilities in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. AZ also will increase the capability of its gene therapy production facilities in Rockville, Maryland, and Tarzana, California, as well as its plants in Mount Vernon, Indiana, and Coppell, Texas.
The investment in the Charlottesville facility is larger than the $4 billion figure originally mentioned by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) at the July press event. The additional funding will be used to create added capacity to produce ADC cancer drugs, AZ said.
As for what AZ will produce at the plant, the company has several promising candidates in the clinic, including an oral GLP-1 obesity drug, a PCSK9 inhibitor that has shown potential to reduce cholesterol and baxdrostat, a treatment primarily being developed for hypertension that recently excelled in a phase 3 study.
AZ’s groundbreaking comes three weeks after Eli Lilly began construction on a $5 billion API plant in Goochland County, Virginia, just outside the state capital of Richmond. A week later, the Indianapolis company laid out plans to build a $6.5 billion API facility in Houston, Texas. The sites are part of the company’s $27 billion investment plan to build four large-scale manufacturing complexes in the U.S.
Other companies that have revealed major investment plans in the U.S. in recent months include Roche, which has pledged to spend $50 billion, and Johnson & Johnson, which has unveiled a $55 billion plan that includes bolstering its medtech business. Meanwhile, Sanofi and Novartis have committed to spend at least $20 billion each in the U.S. by the end of the decade, among investment pledges from many other drugmakers.
The planned investments were revealed as President Donald Trump threatened to tax drugs imported into the U.S. Much remains uncertain about the effect of potential tariffs, though last month Trump said a 100% tax would be added to imported pharmaceuticals, with exemptions for companies which were building manufacturing facilities in the U.S.
“Today’s groundbreaking demonstrates the Trump Administration's commitment to onshoring drug manufacturing and strengthening supply chains to improve Americans’ access to medication,” Mehmet Oz, M.D., the U.S.' Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator, said in a release. “I congratulate AstraZeneca for their investment and invite other foreign manufacturers to follow suit.”