The drugmaker's total Indiana capital commitments since 2020 now exceed $21 billion, with a new genetic medicine facility opening in Lebanon
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Eli Lilly $LLY committed an additional $4.5 billion to two of its three Lebanon, Indiana, manufacturing sites on Wednesday, bringing the company's total capital expansion commitments in the state since 2020 to more than $21 billion, the company said.
The new funding will support process upgrades at Lilly Lebanon API, a future active pharmaceutical ingredient site, and at Lilly Lebanon Advanced Therapies, which opened Wednesday as the company's first facility dedicated to manufacturing genetic medicines. The genetic medicine site is designed to support both clinical and commercial production of therapies that target disease at the genetic level, covering a range of modalities from research-stage development through large-scale commercial supply.
The Lebanon campus is central to Lilly's domestic production of its weight management and diabetes drugs. The company said plans at its Lebanon API site now include production of Foundayo (orforglipron), its recently FDA-approved once-daily oral weight loss pill, as well as retatrutide, an investigational triple hormone receptor agonist in late-stage development for obesity and cardiometabolic disease. Lilly had previously announced that both Zepbound and Mounjaro, its tirzepatide-based injectable medications for weight management and type 2 diabetes, respectively, would also be manufactured at the site.
"When our Lebanon API site opens in 2027, it will be the largest API production site in U.S. history, a commitment we chose to build here, at home," Lilly chair and CEO David A. Ricks said in a statement.
Lilly Lebanon Advanced Therapies is the first of three planned facilities on the Lebanon campus, which will also include Lilly Lebanon API and the Lilly Medicine Foundry. The company said designing and building the genetic medicine facility required developing new manufacturing processes without established commercial precedent.
Across the United States, Lilly has committed more than $50 billion to capital expansion since 2020, and the company expects construction to begin at a number of its newly announced domestic manufacturing facilities before the year is out.
A report to be released next week by Indiana University's Kelley School of Business found that Lilly accounts for 70% of Indiana's pharmaceutical GDP and that every Lilly job supports more than two additional jobs across the state, according to the company.
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