2023-11-23 19:40:54
By Le Figaro with AFP
Published 16 hours ago, Updated 4 hours ago
Emmanuel Macron, this Thursday in Chartres (Eure-et-Loir). POOL / REUTERS
The Head of State visited the site of the Danish giant to seal the announcement of this project which will create more than 500 new jobs.
A funding “unprecedented for the pharmaceutical industry in France and one of the largest amounts of industrial investment for our country this year»: Emmanuel Macron did not hide his satisfaction this Thursday. The Head of State was traveling to Chartres, where the Danish laboratory Novo Nordisk announced it was investing 2.1 billion euros. The objective? Expand its French production site in order to meet the increase in global demand for antidiabetic treatments which also act on obesity.
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. “This investment will ensure the resilience of production chains in an essential sector that is health (…) This is at the heart of the battle for industrial and health sovereignty that we are waging. It is also at the heart of the employment battle“, boasted the President of the Republic.
It should be remembered that, 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. Novo Nordisk’s precursor drug in obesity (“Wegs) is marketed in the United States, Denmark, Norway, the United Kingdom and recently in Switzerland. The laboratory plans to apply for certification in France in 2024.
Also read: How appetite suppressants have become the new Eldorado of the pharmaceutical industry
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» from Chartres (Eure-et-Loir), from which treatments taken by more than 10 million diabetics around the world come out 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 on 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», Specified the group.
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 department’s largest private employer). The extension of the Novo Norisk site in Chartres will create “more than 500 new jobs», which will therefore be added to the 1,600 already existing.
“Media event”
This project was unveiled with great fanfare by Emmanuel Macron a few days ago. The Head of State is expected at 4 p.m. at the Chartres site, alongside Ministers of Health Aurélien Rousseau and Ministers of Industry Roland Lescure, to seal the announcement. After the launch of an ambitious plan around electric batteries in May in Dunkirk – 6.7 billion euros of foreign investment – reindustrialization continues in the health field, with this investment of 2.1 billion euros, higher than that announced by Pfizer (1.5 billion euros) in May. In the same spirit, the President of the Republic also presented in June a plan to relocalize the production of medicines in order to deal with structural shortages – precipitated by the Covid crisis – of antibiotics and paracetamol.
In addition to job creation, the project will also contribute to the “foreign trade battle» of France because 90 to 95% of its production is exported, underlines the Élysée. As a reminder, France has not experienced a trade surplus for the exchange of goods since 2002 and the deficit stood at 54 billion euros over the first half of 2023. Emmanuel Macron, who takes care of his contacts with the CEOs of large international companies, thus reaps a new victory in the battle of “attractiveness» on the European chessboard. The American pharmaceutical group Eli Lilly has just announced an investment of 2.3 billion euros in Germany to expand its production of diabetes drugs.
But the road remains long and winding in a turbulent international context and a national environment which also has its constraints. “It is not by making a new investment a media event that it changes the situation», says Frédéric Bizard, specialist in health issues and economics professor affiliated with ESCP Europe, interviewed by AFP. The main obstacle to foreign investment in France remains “the administrative and regulatory ecosystem» of the drug industry, according to him. For Patrick Biecheler, partner of the consulting firm Bain and Company, these treatments could nevertheless be extended to other diseases such as “disease of foie gras» or Alzheimer and therefore offer multiple “growth prospects».
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