Novo Nordisk to spend about $9 billion in 2025 to create additional capacity
Novo Nordisk will spend approximately $9 billion in 2025 to “create additional capacity across the supply chain,” according to its 2024 annual report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. That amount is an increase from the nearly $6.3 billion the Danish drugmaker spent last year to bolster its manufacturing capabilities and similar projects.
The $9 billion capital expenditure will include “manufacturing of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API), additional aseptic production and finished production processes as well as packaging capacity,” according to the annual report.
Novo Nordisk said it has “continued to invest heavily in scaling up” its manufacturing capabilities with both capital expenditure and acquisitions amounting to nearly $18 billion in 2024.
“The acquisition of three fill-finish sites formerly run by contract and development manufacturer Catalent Inc., along with significant expansions of our existing production facilities in Denmark, France, Brazil, China and the U.S., are testament to our commitment to improving supply stability,” states the annual report.
CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen in a Wednesday earnings call said the Catalent acquisition “supports our ongoing scaling efforts and will expand the Novo Nordisk global fill and finish footprint from 11 to 14 sites.”
In December 2024, Novo Nordisk announced that the $16.5 billion acquisition of Catalent by Novo Holdings and the related $11 billion acquisition by the Danish drugmaker of the three manufacturing sites from Novo Holdings was completed. Located in Italy, Belgium and Indiana, the sites are meant to boost the production of Novo Nordisk’s wildly popular blockbuster GLP-1 medications Ozempic for type 2 diabetes and Wegovy for obesity.
“Our expanding global production network is operating around the clock to ensure a stable and consistent supply of Wegovy,” according to the company’s annual report, which described the “unprecedented” demand for its GLP-1-based medicines, while acknowledging that “production capacity has been stretched.”
In June 2024, Novo Nordisk announced a $4.1 billion investment to expand its U.S. capacity by building a second fill and finishing manufacturing facility in Clayton, North Carolina, to produce current and future injectable treatments for obesity and other chronic diseases.
Plans for 2025
Among Novo Nordisk’s strategic aspirations in 2025 is a “sustainable” supply chain that the drugmaker contends it made progress on with the completion of the Catalent acquisition in late 2024.
“This move will enable us to expand our manufacturing capacity and provide future optionality and flexibility for our existing supply network, while complementing our significant ongoing internal supply chain expansions,” the annual report stated. “Removing bottlenecks in our existing supply chain also remains a top priority as we seek to keep pace with demand.”
Looking ahead, Novo Nordisk said it is equipping the company through “targeted acquisitions of brownfield sites, the strategic expansion of existing facilities, the establishment of new sites and the upscaling of our global production workforce” to support the launch of multiple next-generation therapies.
Both short-term and long-term, Novo Nordisk said it is investing in internal and external capacity to increase supply. “Within manufacturing, investments are mainly related to ongoing scaling of capacity efforts,” the annual report states.
“By investing in state-of-the-art, multi-product facilities designed to accommodate current and future products, we are laying a foundation for sustainable long-term growth,” according to the annual report, which pointed to Novo Nordisk’s more than $11.1 billion investment in expanding its API production capacity, including the construction of a new 170,000-square-meter, multi-product facility in Kalundborg, Denmark.
At the same time, the company’s 2025 outlook “reflects expected continued periodic supply constraints and related drug shortage notifications across a number of products and geographies.” Novo Nordisk also acknowledged that there will be “capacity limitations at some manufacturing sites” this year.