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CLAYTON, N.C. — Novo Nordisk Inc. has broken ground on a new $1.8 billion diabetes medicine production facility in Clayton, N.C.
The 833,000-square-f00t Clayton facility will make active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) for a range of Novo Nordisk’s current and future GLP-1 and insulin medicines. Plans call for the facility to become fully operational in 2020 and to ensure production capacity for diabetes medicines in the United States for the decade ahead, Novo Nordisk said.
The new site is adjacent to Novo Nordisk’s current 457,000-square-foot plant in Clayton, N.C. Expanded several times since it was inaugurated in 1996, the Clayton facility is one of the company’s strategic production sites responsible for the formulation, filling and packaging of diabetes medicines.
The plant also assembles and packages the company’s FlexPen and FlexTouch prefilled insulin devices for the U.S. market.
Lars Rebien Sorensen, president and chief executive officer of Novo Nordisk, and Pat McCrory, governor of North Carolina participated in a ground-breaking event Monday featuring more than 100 community members, employees and policy makers.
“As the prevalence of diabetes has grown in the U.S., so too has the demand for effective treatments,” Sorensen said in a statement. “It gives me great pride to break ground on our new facility site in Clayton where we have an existing, strong organization. This site will play a vital role in enabling us to meet the needs of people living with diabetes in the U.S. for years to come.”
Once the new Clayton facility is operational, the diabetes API production organization there will be named DAPI-US (Diabetes Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients – U.S.), Novo Nordisk said. The plant will be part of the Danish diabetes API production organization in Kalundborg, which will be named DAPI-Denmark.
Novo Nordisk’s expansion of the Clayton facility is expected to create close to 700 new jobs, and during the building period up to 2,500 people are expected to be working on the project at peak construction.
“Novo Nordisk’s billion-dollar decision to bring this landmark manufacturing facility to North Carolina underscores its commitment to our state and confidence in our state’s talent,” McCrory commented. “This expansion of the current site and workforce highlights our ability to be a leader in bio-manufacturing at the global level.”
In late August, Novo Nordisk had announced that it would invest $2 billion into production facilities in Clayton; Malov, Denmark; and Kalundborg, Denmark. The company also announced a decision to initiate phase 3a development of oral semaglutide, a GLP-1 analogue formulated as a once-daily tablet for the treatment of type 2 diabetes.
