Roche, Regeneron Announce Combined $56B Expansions As Tariffs Loom
With the prospect of tariffs hanging over the heads of drugmakers, Roche and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals announced plans this week to spend more than $56B to boost their manufacturing facilities in the U.S.
Switzerland-based Roche said it will spend $50B in the U.S. over the next five years and create 12,000 jobs.
The investment will fund research and development facilities as well as new manufacturing sites in California, Indiana, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, The Associated Press reported. The company's products include multiple sclerosis medication Ocrevus and various cancer treatments and weight-loss drugs.
A deal between Regeneron and Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies will fund a $3B expansion at the latter’s facility in Holly Springs, North Carolina. The 10-year agreement will allow Regeneron to nearly double its large-scale manufacturing capacity in the U.S., according to a press release.
Work is also underway on a $3.6B project at Regeneron’s headquarters in Tarrytown, New York, to add 1,000 jobs and expand research, preclinical manufacturing and support facilities.
The company is also planning a new manufacturing facility in Rensselaer, New York, and has acquired more than 1M SF of land in Saratoga Springs, New York, that could be used for additional manufacturing and production support.
“Regeneron is an American success story, with over 80 percent of our workforce and assets in the U.S. and all of our FDA-approved medicines invented in our New York laboratories,” President and CEO Leonard Schleifer said in a statement.
“Our innovative approach has filled our commercial and clinical pipeline with important new medicines and driven a need for even more manufacturing capacity to fulfill the promise of our science.”
The new manufacturing plans come after President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs April 2 in an effort to beef up manufacturing in the U.S., though many of those tariffs were suspended a week later.
The Trump administration has also opened an investigation into pharmaceutical products that could lead to additional tariffs being added to imported drugs as soon as next month, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Other pharmaceutical companies have made similar announcements in recent months.
Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis unveiled a $23B plan to expand its U.S. manufacturing footprint earlier this month. The company expects to build seven new facilities and upgrade others over the next five years.
Eli Lilly will effectively double its U.S. production budget with a $27B plan to build four new manufacturing facilities in the U.S. beginning this year, the company announced in February. And last month, Johnson & Johnson officials said it would spend $55B over the next four years to expand U.S. production with three new manufacturing sites.
