In a latest move, a pharma major has announced its plans to build a new US manufacturing hub based out of North Carolina. The announcement is a part of the $23bn investment by the pharma giant in its US infrastructure in the coming five years.
It is well to be noted that Novartis already has a manufacturing facility that’s based out of Durham in North Carolina. As part of a New US Manufacturing Hub, this facility is going to be updated, thereby giving it the capability to go ahead and support the sterile filling when it comes to biologics within syringes as well as vials. A new site is going to be constructed in Durham, which will have two facilities that are going to be dedicated to sterile packaging as well as biologics manufacturing. Apart from this, a new site will also come up in nearby Morrisville, which will have a facility when it comes to the solid dosage tablets and capsules production.
Interestingly, the area of North Carolina is called the Research Triangle because of its being home to three prominent research universities and also numerous technology companies.
The planned $23bn US investment from Novartis looks to enable all of its major medicines to be end-to-end produced in the US. The fact is that as much as drug and packaging manufacture, many of the advanced technologies by Novartis are produced within the US. These go on to include cell and gene therapies that are manufactured in the states of New Jersey as well as North Carolina, as well as radioligand therapies, which are produced in New Jersey, Indiana, and also California.
Novartis plans to announce the location for another US manufacturing facility comprising xRNA therapies in the coming few months.
The present facility of Novartis in Durham is going to combine with the new Durham as well as Morrisville facilities in order to create a flagship hub, hence allowing the production teams to work together right from the manufacturing of ingredients to final packaging. Products as well as equipment produced there are going to cover all of the main therapeutic areas of the company, which are oncology, neuroscience, renal immunology, and cardiovascular as well as metabolic.
Notably, the hub, which is anticipated to open between 2027 and 2028, is going to have over 700,000 square feet of area and is at the same time expected to create 700 new jobs in the company by the end of this decade.
