Picking a date for a press conference in Puerto Rico in the middle of hurricane season can be risky business. But, these days, there’s no stopping Eli Lilly’s whirlwind of manufacturing investment announcements.
Wednesday, the Indianapolis company revealed its plan to spend $1.2 billion to upgrade its manufacturing complex in Carolina, Puerto Rico. The outlay comes amid a deluge of commitments by Lilly to bolster its ability to produce drugs in the U.S. Since 2020, the company has earmarked more than $50 billion to increase its domestic manufacturing capabilities, it said.
Lilly said the investment at its Puerto Rico site will allow it to manufacture more of its “growing portfolio” of oral medicines, which include treatments in neuroscience, oncology, immunology and cardiometabolic health.
Lilly specifically highlighted its plan to produce orforglipron at the facility. The highly anticipated cardiometabolic treatment, which is the company’s first oral GLP-1, has drawn peak sales forecasts of between $10 billion and $15 billion. Lilly expects to submit for approval of orforglipron by the end of this year.
The investment will create 100 new manufacturing jobs at the site, according to Lilly. The build-out will begin next year, with the expectation that the upgrades will become operational in 2028.
“Our continued investments in capacity, infrastructure, advanced technologies and highly specialized jobs will further cement the site’s significance in Lilly’s global manufacturing network,” Edgardo Hernandez, who heads up Lilly’s manufacturing operations, said in a release.
Hernandez also pointed to Lilly’s 60-year presence at the facility. For the last two decades, the site—which is dubbed Lilly del Caribe—has performed active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturing for its insulin products. In 2015, Lilly shut down its plant 50 miles away in Guayama and later sold it to a Colombia-based manufacturer.
Meanwhile, Lilly is in the process of revealing the locations of four massive manufacturing facilities it will build the U.S. Last month, the company unveiled a plan for a $5 billion API plant near Richmond, Virginia. A week later, the company said it would build a $6.5 billion API production complex for oral drugs in Houston.
Over the next few months, Lilly will reveal the location of the last two new U.S. facilities, which the company calls “mega sites.”
Other companies that have revealed major investment plans in the U.S. in recent months include Merck, which has committed to spend $70 billion over the next five years on manufacturing, R&D and capital projects. Roche has pledged to spend $50 billion, and Johnson & Johnson 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.
The planned investments come as President Donald Trump has 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 that are building manufacturing facilities in the U.S.