2023-11-24 02:26:47
This aims to meet increasing global demand. The Danish laboratory Novo Nordisk announced this Thursday an investment of 2.1 billion euros to expand its French site for the production of antidiabetes treatments acting on obesity in Chartres (Eure-et-Loir). The world number one in insulin intends to “develop its current production” and “welcome the production of future therapeutic solutions in serious chronic diseases such as obesity”, he explained in a press release distributed to the occasion of a planned trip to Emmanuel Macron.
The Head of State, accompanied by the Ministers of Health Aurélien Rousseau and of Industry Roland Lescure, is expected at 4 p.m. at the Novo Nordisk site in Chartres to seal the announcement. In June, Emmanuel Macron also presented a plan to relocalize the production of medicines in order to deal with structural shortages – precipitated by the Covid crisis – of antibiotics and paracetamol.
Rising obesity worldwide
Obesity, which is increasing all over the world, represents a societal issue, but also a market with exponential growth for the most advanced pharmaceutical players in this niche, including Novo Nordisk. Since September, the group has become the largest European market capitalization (ahead of the French luxury giant LVMH) thanks to the success of its products used against obesity, a difficult-to-treat disease.
These drugs belong to the class of GLP-1 analogues, a hormone which acts on the pancreas to promote insulin secretion in the case of diabetes, but which also acts on the digestive and central nervous system, by curbing the appetite and thus helping to combat obesity. In 2023 alone, Novo Nordisk says it will have invested 10 billion euros across its entire production base across the world, including the “strategic” factory in Chartres, from which treatments taken by more than 10 millions of diabetics around the world every day.
In January, the group had already announced an investment of 130 million euros to triple the assembly and packaging capacity of insulin injector pens, promising around a hundred recruitments. The expansion project announced this Thursday will double the surface area of the Chartres site to 230,000 m2, which will be used for the production of solutions against obesity.
This new “investment will be accompanied by more than 500 new jobs to ensure production activities 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, when the facilities are operational,” the group said. Work has started and the project should be finalized in 2028. The Novo Nordisk production site in Chartres dates from 1961 and today employs some 1,600 people (it is the largest private employer in the department).
Last week, the American pharmaceutical group Eli Lilly, another big player in the diabetes and obesity niche, announced an investment of 2.3 billion euros for a new production site in Germany.
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