And then there were four.
On Friday, Eli Lilly unveiled designs on a new, more-than $3.5 billion manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, rounding out the quartet of plants it promised during its “Lilly in America” investment announcement last year. The latest project caps off a nearly 12-month stretch in which Lilly also planted production flags in Virginia, Texas and Alabama.
The forthcoming site in Pennsylvania will focus on injectables and device manufacturing, with a particular emphasis on next-generation weight-loss therapies, including Lilly’s experimental triple-hormone receptor agonist retatrutide, the company said in a Jan. 30 press release.
Lilly is looking to recruit some 850 employees at the facility, with new jobs slated to open for engineers, scientists, operations personnel and lab technicians. The plant buildout will also generate many indirect construction jobs, with Lilly noting that work is expected to begin on the facility this year. If all goes according to plan, Lilly estimates the new site will come online in 2031.
The company added that it will partner with local universities and invest in education throughout Pennsylvania more broadly to develop talent.
Lilly says it will employ advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, integrated monitoring and data analytics to further augment its work at the Pennsylvania plant as well.
To choose the site’s location, Lilly sifted through more than 300 applications, noting that it ultimately settled on the Lehigh Valley—and Fogelsville, Pennsylvania, specifically—due in large part to its “proximity to STEM universities, its technical manufacturing economy, and its existing infrastructure.”
The Lehigh Valley was once a major force in steel and other heavy manufacturing industries, but the region became emblematic of the decline of the U.S. Rust Belt in the late 20th century. The area was commemorated in Billy Joel’s blue-collar anthem ‘Allentown,’ named after the area’s biggest city. Fogelsville is about 11 miles from Allentown.
In announcing the new plant, Lilly pointed once again to the more than $50 billion it’s funneled into U.S. manufacturing expansions since 2020. Meanwhile, the four plants announced over the last year—which were accompanied by a $27 billion investment pledge—appeared to come in response to the threat of pharmaceutical import tariffs brandished by the second Trump administration.
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 last year announcing pledges similar to Lilly’s.
“To meet increasing demand, we’re expanding our U.S. manufacturing network, with Lehigh Valley adding capacity for next-generation weight-loss medicines,” Lilly CEO David Ricks said in a statement. “We’re creating high-quality jobs and collaborating across the region—with suppliers, educators, and workforce-development partners—to make critical medicines in the U.S.”
“That’s our commitment—to patients, to our new Pennsylvania home and to our country,” he continued.
Prior to Friday’s announcement, Lilly most recently dropped designs on a $6 billion active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) facility in Huntsville, Alabama, focused on peptide and small-molecule drugs, including Lilly’s closely watched oral GLP-1 asset, orforglipron. The company expects to hire 450 permanent employees there.
Lilly has also pledged $6.5 billion for a new drug ingredients plant in Houston, Texas, which is expected to crank out materials for orforglipron, as well as medicines from the company’s small molecule portfolio for cardiometabolic diseases, oncology, immunology and neuroscience disorders. And over in Goochland County, Virginia, Lilly has laid out $5 billion for yet another API plant, this one focused on the company’s bioconjugate platform and monoclonal antibody portfolio.