A little over a year after celebrating its 30th anniversary in China with a major production upgrade, Novo Nordisk is back for another expansion project at its flagship factory in Tianjin.
Novo Nordisk on Tuesday inked a deal with the Tianjin Economic and Technological Development Area (TEDA) to invest 800 million Chinese yuan (roughly $112 million) in an upgrade to the quality testing laboratory at its Tianjin manufacturing facility, which has been in operation since 1994.
The new testing facility is expected to cover some 18,000 square meters (around 194,000 square feet), housing chemical, biological and microbiological labs, according to a Chinese-language press release from TEDA.
With completion of the project expected to occur by the end of 2026, Novo will use the new facility to handle quality control testing at its Tianjin plant. The site is one of the Danish drugmaker’s seven core manufacturing hubs worldwide.
TEDA didn’t disclose the specific drugs Novo’s new testing lab will vet, though other recent projects at the company’s Tianjin site have focused on pre-filled injection pen production and sterile drug manufacturing for products like Ozempic and Wegovy.
Last March, as Novo celebrated three decades of business in China, the company deployed 4 billion yuan (then $556 million) in Tianjin as part of a sterile preparation expansion project. The expansion was expected to wrap up in 2027, Novo said at the time.
In announcing last year’s Tianjin investment, Novo noted that the project was expected to boost production capacity in China to “meet the needs of Chinese patients for innovative drugs.”
With the latest project, Novo’s total investment in Tianjin is slated to surpass 10 billion yuan (around $1.4 billion), TEDA noted in its release. Novo employed nearly 7,000 people across mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan in 2024, according to its latest annual report (PDF), and more than 1,700 people at its Tianjin production plant specifically.
China, like many other countries, has been swept up in the weight loss boom spurred by the approvals of highly effective GLP-1 obesity medicines from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly. At the same time, many other local drugmakers are working to advance their own obesity prospects through the clinic.
Novo’s Ozempic for type 2 diabetes has been approved in China since 2021, while the company’s sister drug for obesity, Wegovy, scored a green light in the country last June. Novo kicked off its Wegovy launch in China around mid-November, Reuters reported last year.
In 2024, Ozempic sales in China reached 5.76 billion Danish kroner ($904 million), while the company's total GLP-1 sales in the country climbed to 7.2 billion kroner (roughly $1.14 billion).
As in other parts of the world, Novo is competing with Eli Lilly for control of the Chinese GLP-1 market, though local biopharma outfits are making headway as well.
Late last month, Innovent Biologics scored a thumbs up from China’s drug regulator for the world’s first dual GLP-1/glucagon (GCP) receptor agonist, mazdutide, for chronic weight management in Chinese adults who are overweight or have obesity. Innovent secured Chinese rights to mazdutide from Lilly in 2019, with Lilly still in control of the asset in other global territories.