Johnson & Johnson will spend $2 billion over the next 10 years to operate a 160,000-square-foot manufacturing facility at Fujifilm Biotechnologies' massive biomanufacturing campus in Holly Springs, North Carolina, which is scheduled to come online this fall.
Fujifilm originally announced the arrangement with J&J in November 2023, saying the U.S. giant had booked a large-scale manufacturing suite at the site.
Fujifilm began building the $2 billion campus in 2021, billing it then as the largest end-to-end biologics production plant in the world, with the expectation to employ roughly 725 at the facility. Then, in April of last year, Fujifilm upped its ante on the site, earmarking an additional $1.2 billion for its construction and increasing its expected head count at the facility to 1,400 by 2031.
Thursday, J&J said its deal with Fujifilm would create approximately 120 new jobs in the state.
In April of this year, Fujifilm revealed a similar arrangement with Regeneron, which is paying $3 billion to secure space at the Holly Springs site for 10 years for the production of bulk drug product for its commercial biologics treatments.
The announcements from drugmakers on U.S. manufacturing come as the Trump administration works to impose import tariffs on foreign-made medicines. Thursday, the industry gained more clarity with the confirmation of a 15% tariff on EU-made innovative drugs.
Several pharma powerhouses—inside and outside of the U.S.—are falling in line, including AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Sanofi and Novartis. The companies have each announced significant U.S. investment plans for the coming years.
As for J&J, the company in March laid out its plan to invest $55 billion in the U.S. over the next four years, building three new manufacturing sites and expanding others already in its medicines and medtech network.
The company announced the plan in conjunction with breaking ground on a new 500,000-square-foot biologics plant in Wilson, North Carolina, which is an hour drive from Holly Springs. In October of last year, J&J revealed its plan to spend more than $2 billion to build the facility, which will create more than 500 jobs and will produce treatments for cancer, immunology and neuroscience disorders.
J&J added Thursday that it will reveal more investment plans in the coming months.
“Johnson & Johnson has more manufacturing facilities in the U.S. than in any other country, and we continue to strengthen our presence here,” J&J CEO Joaquin Duato said in the release. “With the recent signing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, we continue to expand our investment in the U.S. to lead the next era of healthcare innovation.”