Eli Lilly plans $6.5 billion Texas manufacturing plant for obesity pill

Eli Lilly on Tuesday said it will spend $6.5 billion to build a manufacturing facility in Houston, Texas, to boost production of the company’s pipeline of so-called small molecule drugs, including its closely watched experimental obesity pill. 

It is the second in a string of new planned U.S. investments by the drugmaker. Eli Lilly announced in February that it would spend at least $27 billion to build four new domestic manufacturing plants, adding to $23 billion in previous investments since 2020. 

Eli Lilly said it will announce the two remaining U.S. sites this year. The company expects to begin making medicines at all four facilities within five years. 

That added production capacity for Eli Lilly’s obesity pill, orforglipron, is crucial as the company races to bring it to market and tries to maintain its dominance in the booming market for GLP-1s. Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk have previously faced supply constraints with their existing weekly injections, as demand skyrocketed in the U.S. 

“Our new Houston site will enhance Lilly’s ability to manufacture orforglipron at scale and, if approved, help fulfill the medicine’s potential as an obesity and type 2 diabetes treatment for tens of millions of people worldwide who prefer the ease of a pill that can be taken without food and water restrictions,” Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks said in the release. 

Drugmakers have been scrambling to boost their production in the U.S. as President Donald Trump threatens to impose tariffs on pharmaceuticals imported into the U.S. Trump has said those levies will encourage companies to re-shore production after domestic drug manufacturing shrank dramatically over the past decade.

In a release Tuesday, Eli Lilly said the new Houston plant will focus on manufacturing orforglipron and the company’s pipeline of other small molecule medicines across different disease areas, including cardiometabolic health, oncology, immunology and neuroscience. Small molecule drugs, which often come in pill form, are more convenient for patients to take than injectable medications and are generally easier and cheaper to manufacture at scale.  

Eli Lilly said the site will bring 615 jobs to the Greater Houston area, including highly skilled engineers, scientists, operations personnel and lab technicians, and 4,000 construction jobs.