Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co. broke ground Monday on a Houston facility that will manufacture the company’s newly approved GLP-1 pill and other small-molecule medicines and advanced therapeutics.
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Lilly broke ground on the $6.5B facility in Northeast Houston’s Generation Park about a year after announcing the planned investment.
“This $6.5 billion Eli Lilly investment in Houston is the largest active pharmaceutical ingredient project in Texas history and will create more than 600 high-wage jobs, right here in Texas,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement, adding that Texas is “the global hub for life sciences.”
The company also announced Monday that it will provide $12.5M to support a relationship with nearby San Jacinto College to create a pathway into advanced chemical synthesis manufacturing careers.
Bristol Myers Squibb, another pharmaceutical giant, announced in August that it would invest $2.3B to build a 600K SF manufacturing campus in Generation Park. These investments are big wins for McCord Development, the developer of the 4,300-acre master-planned Generation Park.
McCord officials began laying the foundation to attract large-scale biotech and life sciences companies when it broke ground on Generation Park 13 years ago. They doubled down on life sciences-related education and workforce training initiatives after losing out on Amgen’s $550M biomanufacturing project in 2021.
Now Eli Lilly’s $12.5M investment in San Jacinto College will focus on developing training pathways and expanding infrastructure needed to produce technicians, operators, maintenance professionals and other manufacturing talent, the company said in its press release. Separately, Lilly is donating $2.5M to the San Jacinto College Foundation to support student scholarships.
“This facility will run on the talent of this community, powered by our relationship with San Jacinto College,” Lilly Manufacturing Operations President Edgardo Hernandez said in the release. “We're hiring across the greater Houston area to help residents build careers close to home.”
The Houston facility is Lilly’s fifth domestic active pharmaceutical ingredients production location announced since 2020 and part of the company’s $50B push to reshore medicine production.
The facility will produce Foundayo, a synthetic oral GLP-1 medicine approved in the U.S. for weight management. The Food and Drug Administration approved the medicine on April 1.
Lilly is studying Foundayo for other uses, including Type 2 diabetes and obstructive sleep apnea, the company said.
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