During the industry’s onshoring rush of the last nine months, Eli Lilly has been among the most aggressive biopharma companies in building out its U.S. supply chain. Now, after making several major U.S. production pledges this year, the company is ready to splash some cash in Europe.
Lilly is allotting $3 billion to establish an oral medicines manufacturing facility in Katwijk, Netherlands, the company said Monday.
The site is slated to grow the company’s capacity to produce oral therapeutics, including the forthcoming GLP-1 pill orforglipron, and will eventually employ 500 people, Lilly said. The Indianapolis drugmaker is planning to file regulatory submissions for orforglipron in obesity by the end of the year.
Lilly already operates four sites in Europe across France, Ireland, Italy and Spain. In 2023, the company shared plans to add a new injectables manufacturing site in Germany, which was expected to come online in 2027. In Ireland, the drugmaker last year unveiled a $1 billion expansion in Limerick.
"At Lilly, we are investing in next-generation manufacturing facilities around the world to ensure our medicines are made and distributed closer to the communities and patients we serve,” Edgardo Hernandez, president of Lilly's manufacturing operations, said in a statement. “Expanding our capabilities in Europe strengthens our global supply chain and reflects our commitment to getting innovative treatments to patients who need them.”
Throughout 2025, a big focus of Lilly’s manufacturing expansion campaign has been its home country. In recent months, the company has rolled out plans to establish “mega sites” in Virginia and Texas alongside a plant upgrade in Puerto Rico.
Back in February, Lilly said it would spend $27 billion to establish four new massive plants in the U.S. With the Texas and Virginia sites now selected, the company plans to reveal the locations of the two other future sites in the “next few months,” according to Monday’s press release.
Elsewhere, Lilly has also earmarked $1 billion to boost its production capacity in India through local contractors.
The surge of manufacturing investments tracks closely with the company's financial performance in recent years, as it has wrested leadership in the coveted obesity market from first-to-market Novo Nordisk.
In the most recent financial quarter, Lilly's dual-action obesity and diabetes blockbuster tirzepatide generated sales of $10.1 billion after only being approved by the FDA back in 2022. The drug is now the bestselling medicine worldwide, taking the crown from prior sales king Keytruda from Merck & Co.