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Novo Nordisk A/S plans to invest €2.1 billion ($2.3 billion) to expand production in France as it works to meet surging demand for its sought-after weight-loss medicines.
The construction work to beef up the Danish company’s site in Chartres, southwest of Paris, has already started, Novo said in a statement. The investment will increase capacity for the diet drug Wegovy and its sister product for diabetes, called Ozempic.
Novo is racing to build out factories and production lines as competition intensifies in a weight-loss market estimated to reach $100 billion by the end of the decade. For French President Emmanuel Macron, who will travel to Chartres Thursday, spurring a reversal of the country’s industrial decline has been a key economic goal.
The factory makes pre-filled injector pens, which patients need to use Ozempic and Wegovy, as well as insulin. The investment will more than double the site’s footprint and create more than 500 new jobs, Novo said.
The frenzy around the drugs, endorsed by celebrities and entrepreneurs including Elon Musk, turned Novo into Europe’s most valuable company, sending its stock up by about half this year. The shares were little changed in Copenhagen on Thursday.
Earlier this month, the drugmaker unveiled a plan to invest more than $6 billion to build a 170,000 square-meter manufacturing facility in Denmark.
Novo has faced shortages of Ozempic and Wegovy, with some diabetes patients struggling to stay on treatment. Both medicines contain the same active ingredient, semaglutide, which mimics the action of a gut hormone and makes people feel full.
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