The announcement of a manufacturing expansion in Ireland comes roughly two weeks after Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar told Bloomberg that the company was eyeing an Ireland expansion to help produce its Wegovy pill for markets outside the U.S.
With a vital obesity launch now underway in the U.S., Novo Nordisk is casting its attention eastward as it shores up the prospects of its Wegovy pill in Europe and beyond. Novo will invest 432 million euros ($501 million) to add a new tableting plant at its facility in Athlone, Ireland, the company said in a March 2 press release. The expansion will equip the Athlone site with significant additional capacity for Novo’s suite of current and future GLP-1 medicines, according to the release. Specifically, Novo says it is upgrading and retrofitting the existing site in Athlone to manufacture oral GLP-1s like the Wegovy pill. Novo originally announced its purchase of the site from Alkermes in late 2023. The project’s announcement comes roughly two weeks after Novo CEO Mike Doustdar told Bloomberg that the company was eyeing an Ireland expansion to help produce its Wegovy pill for markets outside the U.S. Novo’s Wegovy pill was approved by the FDA in late 2025, launched Jan. 5 and has since generated impressive prescribing stats during its roughly two months on the U.S. market. The pill, which is seen as key in Novo’s showdown in the prescription obesity market with Eli Lilly, is also under review in the EU, with an approval decision expected sometime this year. With the Athlone expansion, Novo asserts that it’s bolstering its oral drug production capabilities and supply while also positioning its Ireland operations as a “critical hub” for markets outside the U.S. The Emerald Isle is host to a bevy of Big Pharma manufacturing setups, including Novo’s chief metabolic medicine rival Eli Lilly, which produces its own GIP/GLP-1 drugs for diabetes and obesity, Mounjaro and Zepbound, there. In a sign of the republic’s biopharma production muscle, Ireland’s pharmaceutical manufacturing output surged a staggering 41.3% last year as companies sought to get a jump on potential U.S. import tariffs, financial services firm Atradius noted in a report earlier this year. That topped the surge seen in any other individual country last year and came in well above the global pharmaceutical production increase of 9.1%, according to Atradius.Novo says it has already started work on the Athlone expansion, which it expects to wrap up “gradually from the end of 2027 through 2028.” Novo noted that it currently has a workforce of 260 at the plant. The company explained that those workers will continue focusing on oral drug production without clarifying whether the project is expected to generate new jobs at the plant. Novo’s Ireland expansion comes as it and many other drugmakers have sought to bolster their U.S. production footprints in recent months. In Novo’s case, the motivation behind its recent manufacturing moves was likely twofold, informed both by the threat of Trump administration pharmaceutical tariffs and a desire to avoid the supply shortfalls that defined early obesity GLP-1 launches for Novo and Lilly. On that front, Novo last June said it would spend $4.1 billion to construct a second-fill finish plant at its campus in Clayton, North Carolina, which is also producing the Wegovy pill. As with many of Novo’s recent projects, the new facility will also produce injectable Ozempic and Wegovy, the company said last year.