Amgen begins building $550m North Carolina plant

Amgen hopes the Holly Springs facility will be operational by 2025, broadening the firm’s stainless steel and single-use drug substance capacity.

The planned $550 million investment was made in August 2021, but this week Amgen broke ground on the 350,000 square-foot facility. When operational – expected 2025 – the North Carolina site will provide Amgen with ‘FleXBatch’ manufacturing, a combination of single-use technologies and stainless steel-fed batch production capabilities taking place in one plant.

“For over four decades, Amgen has been an innovative leader in the manufacturing of complex biologics,” Amgen CEO Robert Bradway said in a statement. “Our commitment to continuous improvement and our significant investments in new technologies have enabled us to further accomplish our mission to serve patients while science rapidly evolves.”

An artist’s rendition of Amgen’s site. Image c/o Holly Springs Economic Development

The biopharma firm is also in the midst of building a $365 million 270,000 square-foot drug packaging facility in New Albany, Ohio.

North Carolina

At the groundbreaking ceremony, Roy Cooper, Governor of North Carolina, noted Amgen’s investment was the latest biomanufacturing spend in the Research Triangle region.

In Holly Springs, Amgen will be neighbors with CDMO Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, which broke ground on a $1.8 billion mammalian cell culture plant in October last year.

Eli Lilly, meanwhile, is building a $1 billion plant in Concord, Thermo Fisher has pumped $154 million into expanding its Greenville fill-finish site, and Abzena selected Sanford as the site of a $200 million biomanufacturing facility equipped with 12x 2,000 L bioreactors.