Since the start of the decade, Eli Lilly has committed to spend more than $50 billion to bolster its United States manufacturing capabilities. But even that’s not enough to meet the needs of the rapidly growing pharma giant.
On Wednesday, Lilly said that it has earmarked another $4.5 billion to further build up two of three planned production facilities in Lebanon, Indiana, some 28 miles northwest of Lilly’s headquarters in Indianapolis. The company revealed the new investment at a ribbon cutting ceremony for its genetic medicine plant in Lebanon, the first of the three new facilities at the site to become operational.
Of the sum Lilly has pledged to spend for its domestic manufacturing in this decade, more than $21 billion has been allocated for the buildup in its home state. Lilly’s “evolving pipeline” and shifts in the anticipated demand for its products dictated the additional funding, the company said.
The investment will further enhance the genetic medicine production facility, which has been dubbed Lilly Lebanon Advanced Therapies, and the company’s active pharmaceutical ingredients plant, which is under construction and will be known as Lilly Lebanon API.
Lilly calls the Lebanon complex—which is set on 600 acres in the LEAP Research and Innovation District—the “cornerstone” of its U.S. production buildout. The company broke ground there in April of 2023.
The API site will produce the company’s mega-blockbuster tirzepatide treatments Mounjaro, for diabetes, and Zepbound, for obesity. Upon its completion, the facility will be the largest API plant in the U.S., according to the company.
The additional funding announced on Wednesday will allow Lilly to also manufacture its newly launched oral GLP-1 obesity treatment Foundayo and its investigational triple hormone receptor agonist retatrutide.
Lilly Lebanon Advanced Therapies will perform clinical and commercial production of therapies that target disease at the genetic level, the company said, adding that "designing and building for these modalities required developing new manufacturing processes without established commercial precedent."
The company’s third plant in Lebanon, dubbed the Lilly Medicine Foundry, is scheduled for completion in 2027 and will combine R&D and clinical trial manufacturing. The company said in 2024 that it would spend $4.5 billion to construct the 1.2 million square foot complex, which will produce small molecules and biologics to treat cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease.
“Lilly's legacy of firsts in Indiana continues today and the best measure of that legacy is what we do next,” David Ricks, Lilly’s CEO, said in a release. “From genetic medicines that could one day prevent disease at its source, to Foundayo, a pill making weight loss treatment accessible to millions, we are not just discovering the medicines of the future, we are building the world’s most advanced plants to make them.”
Local and state governments have contributed to the funding for Lilly's campus in Lebanon. In its release, Lilly said that that a report from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, which will be released next week, shows that the company accounts for 70% of Indiana's pharmaceutical GDP and every Lilly job supports more than two additional jobs across the state.
In February of last year, at a press event in Washington, D.C., Lilly unveiled a plan to spend $27 billion to build four new production facilities in the U.S. Later in the year, the company said it that would construct API plants in Virginia, Alabama and in Houston, Texas, spending $5 billion, $6 billion and $6.5 billion, respectively, on the facilities. The other of the four planned production facilities is a $3.5 billion injectables plant in Pennsylvania.
Since he took office last year, President Donald Trump has used the threat of tariffs in a bid to drive manufacturing commitments back to the U.S., with many large drugmakers—including Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, Roche, Gilead, Bristol Myers Squibb and AstraZeneca—announcing investments. In all, the pledges came to $370 billion in 2025, according to a report from DPR Construction.