Eli Lilly CEO says the drugmaker will manufacture its weight-loss pill in the US
If the company secures regulatory approval, Eli Lilly will manufacture its weight-loss pill orforglipron in the United States, CEO David Ricks told Fox Business in a Friday interview — a day after the drugmaker reported Phase 3 trial results for the investigational oral GLP-1.
While there have been shortages and supply constraints for injectable GLP-1 medicines, Ricks said it will be “easier” for Lilly to manufacture orforglipron at scale in the U.S. because it is an oral drug. At the same time, he called it a “complicated, multi-step process” to make the pill.
“Nothing is easy in medicine making — we have to be super precise,” according to Ricks. “We’re building the largest what we call API factory, which is active pharmaceutical ingredient, in the history of the country.”
In February, Lilly announced a $27 billion investment to build four new U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturing sites — three for active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and one to manufacture injectable products and devices.
Ricks complained in Friday’s interview about permit delays from the FDA and other “challenges in building these super sites in our country, but we’re working through that.” Asked if it costs more to manufacture drugs in the U.S., he said it does but American workers and engineers “who run these plants are the best in the world — it’s the right thing to do for the country, it’s the right thing for our company.”
When it comes to the Trump administration’s potential tariffs on pharmaceuticals, Ricks said he hopes the trade policy that comes out of the Department of Commerce’s ongoing investigation on drug imports will not “punish actors like Lilly who are already re-domesticating our supply chains.”
Lilly in February said it has stockpiled nearly $550 million worth of “pre-launch inventory” for orforglipron, in anticipation of regulatory approval, according to its 2024 annual report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
“We have made a bet already that this was going to succeed — and we’ve built inventory,” Ricks said on Friday. Lilly’s goal is that “when we introduce this product in 2026, we can do it globally in all countries simultaneously, virtually — and at scale without the risk of shortage,” he added.
While Lilly is spending tens of billions of dollars to meet the increasing demand for its wildly popular diabetes and obesity drugs, it will take years for the drugmaker to see volume expansion for its injectable medications Mounjaro and Zepbound, CFO Lucas Montarce told the Leerink Partners Global Healthcare Conference last month.
“Investments into manufacturing will continue,” Montarce said. At the same time, he reiterated that investing in production “takes several years” before seeing increases in capacity.