Eli Lilly and Co. said Wednesday that it will invest another $4.5 billion at its manufacturing site at the LEAP Lebanon Research and Innovation District as a result of the company’s evolving drug pipeline and anticipated demand for its medications.
The Indianapolis-based drugmaker’s latest investment in Boone County will be focused on incorporating new process designs and technologies within two of its three previously announced facilities: Lilly Lebanon Advanced Therapies, which opened Wednesday as the company’s first dedicated genetic medicine manufacturing facility, and Lilly Lebanon API, which will be one of the company’s active pharmaceutical ingredient sites when it opens in 2027.
In 2024, Lilly announced it would manufacture its obesity and weight-loss drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound at Lilly Lebanon API. The new $4.5 billion investment will allow the company to expand on that commitment and produce Foundayo, its new weight-loss pill, and retatrutide, a highly anticipated experimental medicine for obesity and cardiometabolic disease.
Lilly announced its newest investment Wednesday morning at the ribbon-cutting event for Lilly Lebanon Advanced Therapies — the first facility to open at the 9,000-acre LEAP District. (LEAP stands for Limitless Exploration/Advanced Pace.)
Genetic medicine that will be manufactured at Lilly Lebanon Advanced Therapies is an increasing focus for Lilly. In recent months, the company has worked to diversify its pipeline of drug candidates through acquisitions of biotech companies that are developing new genetic therapies for cancer and other disorders.
Lilly CEO David Ricks said at Wednesday’s event that “this is a year of fewer groundbreakings and more openings of plants” for the company.
“Lilly isn’t just discovering medicine of the future,” Ricks said. “We’re building the most advanced manufacturing facilities to make those discoveries, and we’re building those buildings right here in the U.S. At Lilly, manufacturing is, in fact, central to innovation itself. The ability to make medicines reliably and at scale and with uncompromising quality is what turns scientific progress into real medicines for people. It’s how breakthroughs reach patients who need it.”
Gov. Mike Braun said Lilly’s new investment reflects the strength of a long-standing partnership between Lilly and the state of Indiana. In March, Braun announced the state will invest $1 billion over 10 years to boost life sciences-related businesses, with the aim to create 100,000 jobs in those sectors.
“Indiana is America’s life sciences epicenter, and Lilly’s development and manufacturing of life-saving medicine is the centerpiece,” Braun said Wednesday. “Lebanon Advanced Therapies is the next step in that leadership. This purpose-built genetic medicine manufacturing facility will be key to continuing to innovate and to turn science into healing.”
Big investments
Lilly’s latest commitment at the LEAP District brings the company’s total investment there since 2022 to $18 billion, making the site one of the largest capital projects in Indiana history.
In May 2022, Lilly announced plans to invest $2.1 billion in two new manufacturing sites at the LEAP District — Lilly Lebanon Advanced Therapies and Lilly Lebanon API — to expand its network for active ingredients and new medicines. The company broke ground on those facilities in April 2023 when it also announced an additional $1.6 billion investment.
Lilly announced an additional $5.3 billion commitment in May 2024 to increase capacity to manufacture active pharmaceutical ingredients for its diabetes and obesity medicines. It was the largest single investment in active pharmaceutical ingredients production in U.S. history, according to the company.
In October 2024, Lilly announced plans for the $4.5 billion Lilly Medicine Foundry, a campus that is meant to deal with two challenges: finding ways to make medicines better and faster from the test tube to full-scale production and creating batches of experimental medicines for patients in clinical trials. The Lilly Medicine Foundry is expected to open next year on 200 acres west of Interstate 65 at the southwest corner of State Road 32 and County Road 200 West.
Lilly Lebanon Advanced Therapies and Lilly Lebanon API are on 600 acres east of I-65, south of County Road 450 North, west of State Road 39 and north of Witt Road. In total, Lilly plans to construct about 20 buildings on its 800-acre LEAP District campus.
“When our Lebanon API site opens in 2027, it will be the largest active pharmaceutical ingredient production site in U.S. history,” Ricks said. “And it isn’t just a record for its own sake. It’s about reliability and resilience for our company but also for our country, ensuring that when patients need these medicines, we can deliver them.”
Since 2020, Lilly has invested more than $21 billion in Indiana capital expansion projects, including at its Lilly Technology Center campus in Indianapolis at Harding and Morris streets, west of the White River.
The company has made $50 billion in capital expansion projects across the country since 2020, including new plants in Alabama, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia that are part of the drugmaker’s commitment to add four U.S. manufacturing sites through a $27 billion reshoring investment unveiled early last year.
Lilly and Meta Platforms Inc., which owns Facebook and Instagram, are the only two companies that have announced commitments to build at the LEAP District since the Indiana Economic Development Corp. announced plans for it in 2022. Meta is constructing a $10 billion data center campus on 1,437 acres in Boone County.
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