Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly unveiled plans Tuesday to invest $6 billion in a new manufacturing facility in Huntsville.
It’s the largest initial investment in Alabama’s history, Gov. Kay Ivey said.
The Indiana-based Lilly firm plans to make key ingredients for anti-obesity drugs at the new plants, the third of four it is announcing this winter.
Lilly describes the project as a “next-generation synthetic medicine active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) facility” to make “small molecule synthetic and peptide medicines.”
“Some of our biggest medicines will come here,” Lilly CEO David A. Ricks said in Huntsville. “Those are GLP-1 weight-loss medications that are also being studied in all manner of other diseases – heart disease, inflammation and even brain diseases, addiction. … These drugs are transforming not just metabolic conditions, but so many others, and we’ll export those around the world. We’ll make them here and ship them to the planet.”
Ricks said Lilly picked Huntsville’s Greenbrier South site after considering some 300 proposals from around the country. It’s the third of four new U.S. sites the company plans to announce.
“The key criteria for us came down to speed of delivery,” Ricks said of Huntsville, also citing an ecosystem that includes education and workforce initiatives. “Finally, of course, incentives and an environment of stability … There’s been a stable policy in Alabama of pro-industry. Here, we’re moving further up the value chain to really high-tech properties like ours, and we’re excited to get going.”
Construction on the plant is expected to begin in 2026 and to be complete in 2032. The project is expected to add 3,000 construction jobs and about 450 permanent jobs at the facility.
