With a $140 million investment, Moderna will bring its drug product manufacturing to the United States, joining a parade of drugmakers looking to strengthen their supply chains and reduce exposure to potential tariffs on U.S. pharmaceutical imports.
Moderna’s project centers on the buildout of a new facility at its manufacturing campus in Norwood, Massachusetts, 20 miles south of its headquarters in Cambridge. The new plant will allow the company to execute end-to-end clinical and commercial stage production of its mRNA medicines.
“By onshoring drug product manufacturing to our campus in Norwood, Massachusetts, we have completed the full manufacturing loop under one roof in the U.S.,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a Nov. 19 press release. “As an American company committed to building and producing in America, we are proud to strengthen our domestic footprint while bringing meaningful new jobs to the community.”
Moderna added that the facility will generate “hundreds of highly skilled biomanufacturing jobs." The company has already started work on the project and aims to wrap up construction of the plant by the first half of 2027.
The move comes four months after the company scrapped plans to build an mRNA plant in Japan, at the time citing "changes in the business environment both globally and in Japan."
Meanwhile, in September, the company opened the Moderna Innovation and Technology Centre in the United Kingdom. The facility, which is based in Harwell, Oxfordshire, can produce 100 million mRNA vaccine doses annually, with the ability to expand production to 250 million doses during a pandemic.
Moderna's decision to bulk up in the U.S. comes amid a rush of similar moves by drugmakers looking to expand their operations stateside and avoid the worst of the Trump administration's pharmaceutical tariffs.
On the same day as Moderna's announcement, Swiss drugmaker Novartis revealed a plan to establish a “flagship manufacturing hub” in Durham, North Carolina. The project will create 700 new jobs and covers the expansion of Novartis' existing Durham site, the creation of two new ones in the city and the buildout of a third in a nearby town.
Also on Wednesday, South Korean biosimilar specialist Celltrion said it would spend $478 million to upgrade a facility in New Jersey that it bought from Eli Lilly just two months ago for $330 million.
The investments come amid threats by U.S. President Donald Trump to levy a 100% tax on pharmaceutical goods imported into the U.S. from companies not actively building out production infrastructure in the country—although that steep sectoral tariff rate appears to be on hold for the moment.
In response, many companies have hopped on the U.S. manufacturing bandwagon, with drugmakers like Merck, J&J and Roche alone having pledged a combined $175 billion to bolster their operations stateside this year.