A €720M expansion of Eli Lilly’s facility in Kinsale will supply the company’s diabetes and obesity medications across the world.
Lilly is investing $1bn in Limerick in its Alzheimer’s drug facility, while $800m is being invested in the Kinsale facility.
The investment is part of the most ambitious manufacturing expansion agenda in the company’s history.
Since 2020, Lilly has committed more than $20bn to build, expand and acquire manufacturing facilities in the US and Europe.
The project in Kinsale is supported by IDA Ireland.
Lilly’s hi-tech Kinsale manufacturing site was recently recognised as the winner of the Innovation category in the prestigious ‘Facility of the Year’ awards programme run by the International Society of Pharmaceutical Engineers.
Lilly’s history in Ireland began with the purchase of a site near Kinsale in 1978. Ireland’s skilled workforce and low-tax regulatory environment has seen Lilly prosper in Ireland since first arriving almost 50 years ago.
In Kinsale, Lilly has the single largest privately owned solar farm – 26 acres – in the Republic of Ireland, which powers a significant portion of the facility.
In parallel with its manufacturing growth, Lilly’s global business solutions centre in Cork has quadrupled employment levels since 2019, with more than 2,000 employees expected by the end of 2024, over half of whom are working in clinical research and development.
Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment Peter Burke TD said Lilly’s ‘state-of-the-art facilities will contribute to the treatment of diseases affecting millions of people across the world’. ‘They will also create hundreds of new jobs, directly and indirectly, adding to the thousands already employed in Ireland by Lilly.’
Lilly employs over 3,500 people across three sites and a commercial team that is based around the country.
These days, the vast Kinsale manufacturing campus makes active ingredients for use in the worldwide supply of Lilly medicines. It used three distinct high-technology manufacturing platforms – chemical synthesis, biotechnology and peptide synthesis.
Once complete, Limerick will join Lilly’s global manufacturing network producing the biologic active ingredients for the company’s Alzheimer’s disease portfolio and other biologic medicines. ‘Alzheimer’s disease is a devastating diagnosis for both the patient and for their loved ones, along with having a huge burden on society,’ said Anne E White, executive vice president and president of Lilly neuroscience.
‘The treatments we plan to make here in Limerick offer the potential to be able to slow the progression of early symptomatic Alzheimer’s disease and make life better for millions of people around the world.’
