Rounding out the $23-billion U.S. pledge it unveiled last year, Novartis will construct a new active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) facility in Morrisville, North Carolina, the company said on Thursday.
The 56,200 square-foot plant will manufacture ingredients for solid-dose tablets, capsules and RNA therapeutics, marking the 7th and final facility the company will build in the United States as part of the investment plan revealed last April.
The new facility will add to the Swiss company’s growing production presence in the Tar Heel State, too. In November, Novartis detailed plans to establish a “flagship manufacturing hub” in the state’s Research Triangle area, which will include a solid-dose packaging facility in Morrisville. Novartis broke ground at the site five months ago.
As part of that same November initiative, Novartis has also kicked off construction on two new facilities, 15 miles to the northwest in Durham, for biologics and sterile packaging. Those plants are located at Novartis’ current campus in Durham, which includes a gene therapy production facility.
The new API plant in Morrisville is expected to enable end-to-end production for all of Novartis' advanced technology platforms in the U.S. for the first time in the company's history.
“By building a connected, end-to-end footprint, we are strengthening our ability to locally develop, produce and deliver medicines at scale, enabling timely access to innovation for patients in the U.S.,” Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan said in a release.
In addition to its build-up in North Carolina, Novartis has revealed plans to construct radioligand therapy (RLT) production facilities in Denton, Texas, and Winter Park, Florida. Six months ago, Novartis opened a new RLT manufacturing site in Carlsbad, California. Additionally, the company is expanding RLT facilities in Indiana and New Jersey to support the growing demand for cancer treatments.
Two months ago, Novartis also began construction of a biomedical research center in San Diego, which will give the company R&D sites on both coasts, adding to its outpost in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
As for North Carolina, the state has enjoyed a steady influx of recent pharma manufacturing commitments, including a $1.4 billion production hub that AbbVie has planned in Durham; a $2 billion manufacturing complex Roche is building in Holly Springs; and a $2 billion expansion project from Biogen, which will include new facilities and upgrades to other sites in the state.
Novartis is one of many large drugmakers to make U.S. manufacturing and R&D investment pledges since the second Trump administration took office and began brandishing the threat of pharmaceutical import tariffs to earn project commitments and extract industry concessions around other issues like drug pricing.