After making major manufacturing outlays in places like China and the United States earlier this year, Novo Nordisk is returning to its Danish roots.
Earlier this month, Novo Nordisk purchased a 200-acre site in Odense, Denmark’s third largest city, Reuters first reported. The company is now set to kick off preparatory excavation work for a potential new production plant, the news service said.
Financial details around the land purchase were not revealed, and Novo did not specify what the new location would be used for, though an environmental report submitted in January suggests the site could be used for fill-finish production, according to Reuters.
The environmental report further suggests Novo could build a packaging facility by 2026 and establish molding of plastic components for pens by 2030.
"With the political processes and approvals in place, we are pleased to announce that Novo Nordisk is now the owner of the site in Tietgenbyen in Odense," a company spokesperson told Fierce Pharma over email. She suggested Novo would make a final determination on the purpose of the site by year-end once the company has wrapped up an internal review process.
The news comes as Novo races against chief metabolic rival Eli Lilly—and relentless patient demand—to ensure access to its superstar meds Ozempic in diabetes and Wegovy in obesity.
Novo’s GLP-1 meds, both underpinned by the molecule semaglutide, have suffered repeat supply constraints in recent years thanks to their striking mainstream popularity.
In January, Novo relaunched Wegovy in the U.S. after putting a hold on the rollout last year to safeguard continuity of care for patients already on drug. Despite the relaunch, Novo Nordisk’s CEO, Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, warned that the company wasn’t out of the woods with its supply situation.
“It’s to be expected for quite some time there will be demand that outgrows what can be produced by us and probably by the competition,” Jørgensen said on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call in January.
As Novo continues to bolster the supply chain for its blockbuster GLP-1s, the company has made a number of large manufacturing investments over the past few months.
In late June, for instance, the company laid out a whopping $4.1 billion investment to build a second fill-finish plant at its massive campus in Clayton, North Carolina, for Ozempic and Wegovy. Novo plans to add another 1,000 jobs in the Tar Heel state with the production project.
In March, meanwhile, Novo committed around $556 million to beef up its facility in Tianjin, China, as part of an effort to “meet the needs of Chinese patients for innovative drugs.”
While Novo didn’t name the exact drugs that would be made at the expanded plant, obesity med Wegovy was approved in China last month, and Ozempic is on its way to becoming a blockbuster in the country.
All told, Novo has earmarked around $6.8 billion for manufacturing investments this year, up from $3.9 billion in 2023.