With the launch of a key obesity drug underway in the United States, Novo Nordisk is turning its attention eastward to strengthen prospects for its Wigovy tablets in Europe and other countries.
Novo will invest €432 million ($501 million) to add a new tablet factory to its facility in Athlone, Ireland, the company announced in a March 2 press release. The expansion will provide the Athlone site with significant additional production capacity for Novo’s current and future suite of GLP-1 medicines, according to the release.
Specifically, Novo says it is upgrading and renovating its existing facility in Athlone to manufacture oral GLP-1, such as Wigovy tablets. Novo initially announced it would purchase the site from Alkermes at the end of 2023.
The project announcement comes about two weeks after Novo CEO Mike Doustdar told Bloomberg that the company is considering expanding in Ireland to help produce Wegovy tablets for markets outside the United States.
Novo’s Wigovy tablets were approved by the FDA in late 2025, launched on January 5, and have since generated impressive prescribing statistics in the nearly two months on the U.S. market. The pill, seen as the key to a battle between Novo and Eli Lilly in the prescription obesity market, is also under review in the EU, with an approval decision expected later this year.
Novo claims the Athlone expansion will strengthen production capacity and supply of oral medicines, while also positioning its Irish operations as a “key hub” for markets outside the US.
The Emerald Isle is home to manufacturing sites for major pharmaceutical companies, including Novo’s metabolic medicines biggest rivals, Eli Lilly, Munjaro and Zepbound, which make their own GIP/GLP-1 drugs for diabetes and obesity.
In a sign of Ireland’s biopharmaceutical production strength, financial services firm Atradius said in a report earlier this year that Ireland’s pharmaceutical manufacturing output grew by a staggering 41.3% last year as companies sought to avoid import duties from the United States.
According to Atradius, this exceeded the surge seen in other individual countries last year and was well above the global drug production growth rate of 9.1%.
Novo says it has already begun work on the Athlone expansion, which is expected to be completed “in stages from the end of 2027 to 2028.” Novo said it currently has 260 employees at the plant. The company declined to say whether the project is expected to create new jobs at the plant, saying those employees will continue to focus on oral drug production.
Novo’s expansion in Ireland comes as a number of other drug companies have sought to expand their manufacturing footprint in the United States in recent months. In Novo’s case, the motivation behind the recent manufacturing move is likely twofold, both due to the Trump administration’s threat of drug tariffs and a desire to avoid the supply shortages that characterized Novo and Lilly’s early bariatric GLP-1 launches.
In this regard, Novo announced last June that it would spend $4.1 billion to build a second-fill finishing plant at its Clayton, North Carolina, campus that would also produce WeGoBe tablets. Like many of Novo’s recent projects, the new facility will also produce injectable Ozempic and Wigovy, the company announced last year.
