Elli Lilly said it has chosen a location near Richmond, VA, for its planned $5 billion manufacturing plant that will be the first-ever dedicated, fully integrated active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and drug product facility for the pharma giant’s bioconjugate platform and monoclonal antibody portfolio.
Lilly has chosen the West Creek Business Park in Virginia’s Goochland County for the facility, which will manufacture APIs for therapies designed to treat cancer, autoimmune diseases, and other disorders—including antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs).
The planned Goochland County facility is the first that Lilly has revealed since announcing in February that it would roughly double—to more than $50 billion since 2020—its planned spending on U.S.-based manufacturing by building four new facilities. At the time, Lilly said three of the facilities would be API manufacturing sites, while the fourth would extend the company’s global parenteral manufacturing network for future injectable therapies.
The locations of the other three sites will be announced later this year, Lilly said.
“Our investment in Virginia underscores our commitment to U.S. innovation and manufacturing—creating high-quality jobs, strengthening communities, and advancing the health and well-being of Americans nationwide,” David A. Ricks, Lilly’s chair and CEO, said in a statement. “By expanding our domestic capacity, we’re building a secure, resilient supply chain that delivers for patients today and supports the breakthrough medicines of tomorrow.”
Ricks is among biopharma CEOs whose companies have announced plans for a combined $290 billion-plus in new and renovated facilities. While primarily focused on manufacturing, some of the companies have unveiled projects intended to bolster R&D and other operations.
The announcements have trickled out in recent months as President Donald Trump’s administration has pressed the biopharma industry to make more of its products in the United States, in part by threatening to impose tariffs on pharma imports. Ricks is a Trump ally who publicly credited the president’s earlier 2017 tax cuts with enticing them to build their manufacturing sites in the United States.
“We will continue to bring more capacity online in 2025 and expect our production capabilities to increase further,” Ricks told analysts on August 7 on the company’s quarterly earnings call following the release of second-quarter results. On the call, he said Lilly planned two manufacturing site announcements during the current third quarter—the Virginia site and a site yet to be announced.
Choosing Virginia
Lilly is the second pharma giant to announce plans for a multi-billion-dollar manufacturing plant in Virginia in recent months. The first was AstraZeneca, which in July joined Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) in revealing plans for what the company said will be its largest-ever manufacturing facility at a site in the Old Dominion State—later revealed to be within Albemarle County, near Charlottesville, VA.
Virginia is part of the BioHealth Capital Region, along with Maryland and Washington, D.C. The region ranks number three in GEN’s most recent A-List of Top 10 U.S. Biopharma Clusters.
Lilly said it chose Goochland County from “several hundred” applications seeking the API facility based on criteria that included, but were not limited to, the potential of the workforce in Greater Richmond, ready access to utilities and transportation, favorable zoning, and economic incentives.
Youngkin announced that the state’s public-private economic development agency, the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, worked with Goochland County and the General Assembly’s Major Employment and Investment (MEI) Project Approval Commission to secure the project for Virginia.
Lilly will be eligible for an MEI Commission-approved special appropriation of up to $130 million, subject to approval by the Virginia General Assembly. The $130 million package was based on the pharma giant’s original plans for the site, which called for investing more than $2.148 billion and creating 468 jobs.
Lilly now expects the project to generate 1,800 construction jobs, followed by more than 650 new high-paying jobs that will include positions for engineers, scientists, operations personnel, and lab technicians. The company employs more than 49,000 people worldwide, of which roughly half (22,000 employees) are based in the United States. Lilly has manufacturing facilities in nine countries, including the United States, where it has sites in its headquarters state of Indiana, North Carolina, as well as New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Puerto Rico.
Lilly plans to build the Goochland County API site within five years.
“This isn’t just another manufacturing site—it represents a significant milestone for Lilly, as we begin building our first bioconjugate facility,” said Edgardo Hernandez, executive vice president and president of Lilly Manufacturing Operations. “With this cutting-edge site, Lilly is setting a new benchmark in bioconjugate innovation, advancing technologies that will expand what’s possible for patients.
