Novo Nordisk breaks ground on nearly $2 billion diabetes medicine production facility in Clayton, North Carolina

Production expansion to bring 700 jobs to Clayton

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Mar 28, 2016, 01:00 ET

CLAYTON, N.C., March 28, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Novo Nordisk broke ground on its new $1.8 billion diabetes medicine production facility in Clayton, N.C. More than 100 community members, employees and policy makers attended a ceremonial event alongside Lars Rebien Sørensen, president and chief executive officer of Novo Nordisk, and Pat McCrory, Governor of North Carolina.

The facility will produce active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) for a range of Novo Nordisk's current and future GLP-1 and insulin medicines. Once fully operational in 2020, the Clayton facility will ensure production capacity for diabetes medicines in the U.S. for the decade ahead.

Once complete, the new facility will measure 833,000 square feet and have a footprint of 417,639 square feet – the equivalent to approximately seven football fields. This expansion is expected to create close to 700 new jobs, with an average salary that is $68,000 – $22,000 higher than the current average salary, and $15,000 more than the median household income in Johnston County. At the same time, Novo Nordisk expects to create a significant employment effect during the construction period with up to 2,500 people working on the project at peak construction.

"As the prevalence of diabetes has grown in the U.S., so too has the demand for effective treatments," said Lars Rebien Sørensen, president and chief executive officer of Novo Nordisk. "It gives me great pride to break ground on our new facility site in Clayton where we have an existing, strong organization. This site will play a vital role in enabling us to meet the needs of people living with diabetes in the U.S. for years to come."

"Novo Nordisk's billion dollar decision to bring this landmark manufacturing facility to North Carolina underscores its commitment to our state and confidence in our state's talent," said Pat McCrory, Governor of North Carolina. "This expansion of the current site and workforce highlights our ability to be a leader in bio-manufacturing at the global level."

The new site is situated adjacent to Novo Nordisk's 457,000 square foot Clayton, N.C. facility. Expanded several times since it was inaugurated in 1996, Novo Nordisk's current plant in Clayton, N.C. is one of the company's strategic production sites responsible for formulation, filling and packaging of diabetes medicines. The plant also assembles and packages the company's FlexPen^® and FlexTouch^® prefilled insulin devices for the U.S. market.

Once the new site becomes operational, the diabetes API production organization in Clayton will be named DAPI-US (Diabetes Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients – US). It will be part of the Danish diabetes API production organization in Kalundborg, which will be named DAPI-Denmark.

On August 26, 2015, Novo Nordisk announced that it would invest $2 billion USD into production facilities in Clayton; Malov, Denmark; and Kalundborg, Denmark, with $1.8 billion of this amount being invested in the Clayton, N.C. plant. That same day, the company announced a decision to initiate phase 3a development of oral semaglutide, a GLP-1 analogue formulated as a once-daily tablet for the treatment of type 2 diabetes (company announcement 52/2015).

About Novo Nordisk:
Novo Nordisk is a global healthcare company with more than 90 years of innovation and leadership in diabetes care. This heritage has given us experience and capabilities that also enable us to help people defeat other serious chronic conditions: hemophilia, growth disorders and obesity. With U.S. headquarters in Plainsboro, N.J., Novo Nordisk Inc. has more than 5,000 employees in the United States. For more information, visit novonordisk.us or follow us on Twitter: @novonordiskus.

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SOURCE Novo Nordisk