Eli Lilly has broken ground on a $3.5 billion manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley to produce injectable medicines, including investigational obesity treatment retatrutide. Located in Fogelsville, the site is expected to become operational by 2031 and is part of the company's $50 billion investment in expanding U.S. medicine production.
The facility is expected to create 850 jobs, including engineers, scientists, operations personnel and laboratory technicians, along with approximately 2,000 construction jobs as the site is built and brought online. Lilly is currently hiring in the region and plans to incorporate machine learning, artificial intelligence, digitally integrated systems, advanced data analytics and automation throughout manufacturing operations.
Retatrutide is a once-weekly investigational molecule that activates receptors for glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide, glucagon-like peptide-1 and glucagon. Lilly is evaluating it in Phase 3 trials covering obesity and overweight, type 2 diabetes, knee osteoarthritis pain, obstructive sleep apnea, chronic low back pain, cardiovascular outcomes and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease; the drug cannot legally be sold or marketed for human use.
Lehigh Valley is one of 10 new U.S. manufacturing sites Lilly has announced since 2020, including five for active pharmaceutical ingredients, four for injectable medicines and devices, and one for genetic medicines. The other injectable medicine and device sites are in Research Triangle Park and Concord, North Carolina, and Kenosha, Wisconsin.
The Pennsylvania facility is targeting LEED Gold certification. Lilly also plans to provide up to $1 million over five years to the Upper Macungie Township Community Fund for nutrition, food access, health resources and community programming.
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