Eli Lilly plans a $3.5 billion Lehigh Valley pharma campus for new weight-loss drugs
The planned factory in Upper Macungie Township gives Pennsylvania a big win in the race to attract some of the billions in spending by Big Pharma to boost U.S. manufacturing.
Eli Lilly & Co. plans to build a $3.5 billion pharmaceutical plant in the Lehigh Valley to expand manufacturing capacity for next-generation weight-loss medicines, the Indiana company announced Friday in Allentown.
The decision by Lilly to build one of its four new U.S. factories in Lehigh County marks a significant win for Pennsylvania as states compete for the billions Big Pharma, under pressure from Washington, is spending to boost domestic manufacturing.
“The Mid-Atlantic, Northeast in recent years hasn’t seen this type of mega-plant investment. Most of that has gone to the South and the Southwest,” Don Cunningham, CEO of Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp., said in an interview.
The Lehigh Valley sits in the middle of a pharmaceutical manufacturing belt that stretches from Montgomery County into central New Jersey, but historically has been known for steel, cement, and Mack Trucks. The Lilly plant will put it on the map for life sciences, said Cunningham, whose agency helped recruit Lilly.
Montgomery County, a major drug and vaccine manufacturing hub, secured another significant project during the ongoing pharmaceutical investment push. The British GSK said in September that it will build a biologics factory in Upper Merion Township, but did not specify how much it would spend there.
Merck, the New Jersey-based drug giant, announced plans for a $1 billion factory and lab near Wilmington, beyond its existing major operations in Montgomery County.
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Until now, Lilly has been busy in the South. Last year, Lilly announced plans to spend a total of $17.5 billion on three factories in Alabama, Texas, and Virginia. The Lehigh Valley was in the competition for the Virginia project, which will be built west of Richmond, Cunningham said.
The 150-acre Lehigh Valley site, in Upper Macungie Township, was selected from more than 300 applications for one of the four new Lilly plants. Ohio was among the other finalists, Cunningham said. The property Lilly is acquiring is adjacent to Interstate 78 on the north side just west of the Route 100 interchange.
Pennsylvania boosted its chances of landing the Lilly project by offering up to $50 million in tax credits and $50 million in grants. An additional $5 million will go to a local community college for a job training program.
Gov. Josh Shapiro played an important part in securing the Lilly commitment, Cunningham said, with “his team bringing to bear every resource the state could.”
When fully operational in 2031, the Lilly complex is expected to employ 850. The average annual pay in a Lilly facility is $100,000, Lilly’s chairman and CEO David A. Ricks told a crowd gathered at the Da Vinci Science Center. “Those are high value jobs that I can say with a lot of confidence change the trajectory of families,” Ricks said.
Among the products Lilly anticipates manufacturing at the plant are Zepbound, which Ricks called the world’s best-selling medicine, and retatrutide, a type of weight-loss medication dubbed “triple G” that acts on three aspects of appetite regulation.
Early results suggest such next-generation medications may lead to more weight loss than seen with the current drugs on the market, such as Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Lilly’s Mounjaro, which target one or two metabolic drivers.