Maker of weight loss drugs to build $4.1B factory in North Carolina

Novo Nordisk announced plans on Monday to build a $4.1 billion facility in North Carolina, as demand for its popular weight-loss drugs has only increased in recent months.

The plant will be the Danish company’s second fill and finishing manufacturing facility in Clayton, N.C., and its fourth facility in the area overall.

Novo Nordisk — known for weight-loss and diabetes drugs Wegovy and Ozempic — said the new facility would expand over 56 acres and add 1.4 million square feet of production space, doubling the combined square footage of the other three facilities in North Carolina.

The life science investment marks the single largest in the state’s history, Novo Nordisk said. The company said it expects to add 1,000 new jobs, adding to the 2,500 in the region.

Construction for the facility will gradually be finalized between 2027 and 2029, the company said, and “early clearing and foundational work are already underway.”

The goal, according to Novo Nordisk's press release, is to expand the company’s ability “to produce current and future injectable treatments for people with obesity and other serious chronic diseases.”

“It took us a century to reach 40 million patients, but through this expansion and continued investment in our global production, we’re building Novo Nordisk’s ability to serve millions more people living with serious chronic diseases in the future,” Novo Nordisk president and CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen said in the press release. “This is yet another real signal of our efforts to scale up our production to meet the growing global need for our life-changing medicines and the patients of tomorrow.”