Novo Nordisk starts €432m Ireland facility upgrade for oral Wegovy production

Novo Nordisk has invested €432m ($501m) to upgrade its installation successful Ireland to guarantee the drugmaker tin conscionable the anticipated precocious request for oral value nonaccomplishment drugs.

Novo’s tract successful Monksland, Athlone, is 1 of 16 facilities the institution has crossed the world. The enlargement of the 45-acre tabletting installation is expected to beryllium completed by 2028, though operation has already begun.

The site’s existing 260 employees volition absorption connected delivering oral glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs). The Danish drugmaker precocious won US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) support for oral Wegovy (semaglutide), with the cause forecast to beryllium a large maturation operator for Novo. Novo has besides filed the caller merchandise for support successful different markets, including the EU and UK, with decisions owed this year.

GlobalData's patient-based forecasts bespeak that the Wegovy pill volition make $4.5bn successful yearly income successful 2031. However, fixed the beardown aboriginal uptake for the cause already successful the US, this fig is apt to rise.

GlobalData is the genitor institution of Pharmaceutical Technology.

Novo said the investment, which is via an upgrade and retrofitting of the existing facility, volition heighten its quality to manufacture oral GLP-1RAs.

Kasper Bødker Mejlvang, Novo Nordisk’s enforcement vice president for CMC and merchandise supply, said: “With the concern successful the Athlone facility, Novo Nordisk is expanding its accumulation capacities for oral products, which volition fortify our quality to conscionable some existent and aboriginal demand, extracurricular the US.”

In 2024, Novo Nordisk announced plans for a $4.1bn installation successful North Carolina, tasked with making some the Wegovy pill and the archetypal subcutaneous mentation for US patients.

The announcement comes arsenic Novo’s main rival successful the obesity market, Eli Lilly, is besides outlaying important funds to boost manufacturing successful cardinal markets. In January 2026, the institution revealed plans for a 4th mega-facility it intends to physique successful the US arsenic portion of a $27bn concern thrust successful the country. Some of these facilities, including an enlargement to 1 successful Puerto Rico, volition nutrient oral value nonaccomplishment therapies.

Eli Lilly’s candidate, presently nether regulatory reappraisal successful the US, is forecast to make $14.8bn successful 2031 sales, according to a GlobalData investigation of markets successful the US, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK.

Ireland is already a large GLP-1RA manufacturing basal for Lilly. The large pharma institution makes tirzepatide, the progressive pharmaceutical constituent (API) for its Mounjaro and Zepbound drugs, astatine its mill successful Kinsale, County Cork.