Dive brief:
- AbbVie said Wednesday will invest 1.4 billion dollars to build a large manufacturing campus in Durham, North Carolina to support the production of its immunology, neuroscience and oncology drugs.
- The drugmaker plans to hire 734 people at the 185-acre site over the next four years, including engineers, scientists, production workers and lab technicians, according to a news release. It also plans to implement artificial intelligence to support production.
- Construction on the facility will begin this year and is expected to be completed by the end of 2028, AbbVie said. This is the company’s first major investment in North Carolina and its largest investment in a single location to date.
Diving knowledge:
The AbbVie Durham campus, which will be nearby Research Triangle Parkit’s part of the drugmaker’s broader $100 billion commitment to U.S. research and development, as well as manufacturing, over the next decade.
The first phase of construction will include small-volume parenteral drug manufacturing facilities, laboratories, a warehouse, administrative offices and employee wellness centers, according to a news release. SVPs are sterile, injectable pharmaceutical products such as vials, prefilled cartridges, and prefilled syringes that contain medication for injection or infusion. They are usually less than 100 milliliters in volume.
Once construction is complete, AbbVie said the Durham campus will be its U.S. center of excellence for SVP manufacturing with the ability to deliver drugs to patients around the world. AbbVie chose the site for its ability to support future expansion and its proximity to the area’s strong local workforce.
“By establishing this campus, we are strengthening our ability to support future medical advances while creating new jobs and a long-term partnership with Durham and the state of North Carolina,” Robert Michael, AbbVie’s president and CEO, said in a statement.
The state has recently approved a subsidy for investment in labor development this would reimburse AbbVie up to $19.3 million for its project over 12 years. The payments will begin only when the state can measure and verify that AbbVie has met its incremental job creation and investment goals, according to North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein’s office.
As part of the grant agreement, the state said it will also move up to $6.4 million into its industrial development fund utilities account, which is designed to support infrastructure upgrades in rural areas to attract future businesses. AbbVie’s project is estimated to add $8 billion to the state’s economy.
AbbVie has committed to investing more than $2.2 billion in US manufacturing over the past year, creating jobs in North Carolina, IllinoisArizona and Massachusetts. That’s on top of a growing number of drugmakers spending billions expanding their manufacturing and R&D in the U.S. to better reach domestic customers amid tariffs and geopolitical disruptions.
CSL Behring broken ground at a $1.5 billion immunoglobulin plant in Kankakee, Ill., last month. Earlier this year, Pennsylvania made sure over a billion dollars of Johnson & Johnson and $3.5 billion from Eli Lilly to build drug manufacturing facilities focused on cancer and weight loss drugs, respectively.
