Pharma giant Novo Nordisk unveils record €2.1bn investment in France
Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk is to pour €2.1 billion into expanding its French production site in Chartres, south-west of Paris, in order to meet a rise in global demand for anti-diabetes and anti-obesity treatments.
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The news is a boost for French President Emmanuel Macron's bid to "reindustrialise" France, a key promise of his second term in office.
It comes on the back of a €1.5 billion investment by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer in May.
Sales of the Ozempic and Wegovy treatments have made Novo Nordisk the most valuable company in Europe by market capitalisation.
But it's struggled to keep up with demand for the drugs, which both rely on its GLP-1 analogues – a medicine that increases the amount of an intestinal hormone that secretes insulin.
Boon for France
The Novo Nordisk production site in Chartres dates from 1961 and employs some 1,600 people.
The new investment will see the site double in size and create more than 500 new jobs and ensure production activities around the clock, once the facilities are operational.
Work has started and the project should be finalised in 2028.
Macron visited the site on Thursday afternoon accompanied by the Ministers of Health, Aurélien Rousseau, and Ministers of Industry, Roland Lescure.
In June, he presented a plan to relocalise the production of medicines in order to deal with structural shortages of antibiotics and paracetamol brought on by the Covid crisis.
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In 2023 Novo Nordisk says it has invested €10 billion across its entire production base across the world, including the strategic factory in Chartres, which makes treatments for more than 10 millions diabetics around the world every day.
Its Ozempic is an injectable anti-diabetic treatment which became popular on social networks for its slimming properties, even though it is not approved for such use.
Wegovy, which has the same active ingredient as Ozempic in a different dose, was approved by US regulators to treat obesity. Wegovy is also marketed in Denmark, Norway, the United Kingdom and Germany. The laboratory plans to apply for certification in France in 2024.
Obesity, which leads to many people developing diabetes, is a growing health problem, with the World Obesity Federation estimating that one in four people could be obese by 2035.
"It does not come down to eating too much and not moving enough. Over time, it becomes a real chronic illness with resistance to weight loss," Karine Clément, professor of nutrition at the Pitié-Salpétrière hospital in Paris told French news agency AFP.
(with AFP)
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