By Patrick Wingrove
(Reuters) -Eli Lilly will make its next-generation experimental weight-loss pill, orforglipron, at a new multi-billion-dollar manufacturing plant it plans to build in Texas, the company said on Tuesday.
Lilly said it would invest $6.5 billion to build the plant in Houston, Texas, as part of its $27 billion, four-site U.S. build-out plan for the next five years.
The Houston facility will make the active pharmaceutical ingredients for orforglipron and for some of Lilly’s cancer, autoimmune and other advanced therapies, the company said.
Lilly Chief Executive David Ricks told Reuters the new plant would be a major hub for orforglipron production, although the drug will also be made at a site in Indiana.
“This site will make orforglipron primarily and some of the precursor materials that make up (the drug),” he said, adding that it would enhance Lilly’s ability to make the pill at scale.
Ricks said Texas was chosen for the site partly because of the chemical engineering and chemistry expertise in the area, along with the abundance of skilled labor and construction support there.
Lilly, the world’s most valuable drugmaker by market value, has been ramping up U.S. and global manufacturing to meet surging demand for its injectable GLP‑1 obesity drug, Zepbound, and is racing against rival Novo Nordisk to launch a weight‑loss drug in pill form.
Orforglipron, which is designed to mimic the appetite-suppressing GLP-1 hormone targeted by Lilly’s blockbuster Zepbound, could generate around $25 billion for Lilly in annual peak sales, Jefferies analyst Akash Tewari said in a note this month.
Data showed that the daily pill helped patients lose 12.4% of their body weight in a late-stage study. Lilly plans to submit it for regulatory review later this year.
Wall Street analysts have said the drug is a good candidate, however, for a fast-track one- to two-month review process recently launched by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Global drugmakers have also been ramping up U.S. manufacturing investment this year after President Donald Trump urged them to make more medicines domestically instead of importing ingredients or finished products.
Lilly and other large pharmaceutical companies including Johnson & Johnson, Roche and Sanofi have together pledged to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into U.S. manufacturing in the coming years.
Lilly in February pledged at least $27 billion for four new U.S. plants. It last week said it had picked Goochland County, Virginia, for a $5 billion site.
Lilly’s Texas project is expected to create more than 600 permanent jobs for scientists, engineers and other skilled workers, along with about 4,000 construction roles, the company said.
The Indianapolis-based drugmaker plans to announce the locations of the two remaining U.S. plants later this year and expects to begin making medicines at all four facilities within five years.
(Reporting by Patrick Wingrove in New York; Editing by Edmund Klamann)
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