Eli Lilly plans $3.5 billion Pennsylvania plant for obesity drugs

Eli Lilly Pennsylvania will spend more than $3.5 billion to build a manufacturing facility in the Lehigh Valley that will help produce the next generation of obesity drugs, the company said Friday.

This includes a closely monitored experimental drug called retatrutide, which showed the greatest weight loss of any treatment to date in a late-stage trial.

This is the fourth facility in a series of new investments the pharmaceutical giant plans to make in the United States. Lilly announced in February 2025 that it would spend at least $27 billion to build new domestic manufacturing facilities, adding $23 billion to previous investments made since 2020.

President Donald Trump on Thursday said Lilly CEO Dave Ricks told him the drugmaker’s target. Building six facilities in the US However, Lilly did not approve of these plans.

The company said Friday that it expects construction of the Pennsylvania facility to begin this year and be operational in 2031.

Additional production capacity is crucial for future weight loss treatments. Retatrutide is seen as a key pillar of Lilly’s long-term obesity strategy, following its popular Zepbound injection and its upcoming obesity pill.

Some health experts say retatrutide, which works by targeting three gut hormones instead of one or two, could reach patients with severe obesity who would benefit from weight loss far beyond what current injections can offer. Lilly plans to release data from seven other Phase 3 trials of the drug this year.

The company and its chief rival, Novo Nordiskhas previously invested heavily in expanding production capacity after facing supply shortages at its current weekly injections in the US

Preparing adequate supplies of future drugs is also central to Lilly’s efforts to maintain its dominance in the emerging GLP-1 market. The company overtook Novo for the first time last year, gaining a majority stake in the space.

But the Danish drugmaker hopes to close the gap this month with the launch of the first anti-obesity GLP-1 pill; This pill has already garnered thousands of prescriptions in the United States. Lilly has its own pill, or forglipron, that could be approved and brought to market later this year.

Drug manufacturers are scrambling to increase their production in the United States after President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on drugs imported into the United States. But concerns about those potential tariffs have faded in recent months after voluntary drug pricing agreements with Trump (including both Lilly and Novo) exempted them from taxes for three years.

Eli Lilly said the Pennsylvania facility will bring 850 jobs to the region, including engineers, scientists, operations staff and laboratory technicians, as well as 2,000 construction jobs.