Eli Lilly will invest more than $1.2bn into its manufacturing site in Puerto Rico, as the drugmaker looks to assemble a robust supply chain for oral weight loss pill orforglipron.
The funds will be used to expand and modernise Lilly’s site in Carolina, a city on the northeastern coast of the Caribbean Island. It will be one of Lilly’s facilities assigned with manufacturing orforglipron, the companies hotly anticipated oral glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA).
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Lilly is also constructing a $6.5bn active pharmaceutical product (API) facility in Texas, which will also chiefly be tasked with manufacturing orforglipron.
The US big pharma company plans to submit the drug to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for regulatory review in obesity in 2025, with a type 2 diabetes application coming in 2026. GlobalData analysts forecast orforglipron sales could reach $11bn in 2031, with Eli Lilly’s investments reflecting a wish to avoid the shortages seen with injectable GLP-1As.
GlobalData is the parent company of Pharmaceutical Technology.
Alongside orforglipron, Lilly’s Puerto Rico site – dubbed Lilly del Caribe – will support the company’s growing portfolio of oral solid medicines across cardiometabolic health, neuroscience, oncology and immunology.
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By GlobalDataTechnologies such as dock-to-dock automation and material flow, paperless manufacturing, process analytical technology and spray-dried dispersion will be employed at the enhanced facility.
Construction on the expanded oral solid medicine product manufacturing facility is estimated to begin in 2026, with plans to start producing medicine by the end of 2028.
Lilly del Caribe is known for producing the company’s insulin product Humalog over the past two decades, though the plant itself was originally built in 1968.
“After 60 years, Lilly del Caribe continues to play an important role in making life-changing medicines for people in the US and beyond,” said Edgardo Hernandez, executive vice president and president of Lilly manufacturing operations.
“Our continued investments in capacity, infrastructure, advanced technologies and highly specialised jobs will further cement the site’s significance in Lilly’s global manufacturing network.”
Puerto Rico governor Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon said: “Lilly’s multimillion-dollar expansion is a resounding vote of confidence in our people, our infrastructure and our long-term competitiveness within the US supply chain.”
US supply chains have been the name of the game in the pharma industry this year amid an onshoring manufacturing push by US President Donald Trump, fuelled by tariff outlays.
For Lilly, the Puerto Rico expansion is part of the company’s wider $50bn investment strategy to expand US drug manufacturing capacity.
Lilly is in the process of building four “mega sites” in the US. Last month, the drugmaker revealed plans to build a $5bn manufacturing facility in Virginia. The Texas facility project was also unveiled in September. Over the next few months, Lilly will reveal the locations of the final two new large manufacturing facilities in the US.
Elsewhere in the pharma industry, Johnson & Johnson is set to invest $55bn over the next four years, including a $2bn biologics production site in North Carolina. Roche outlaid a similar amount, planning $50bn worth of investment in the US.
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