Eli Lilly announces $3B expansion in Kenosha County

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A national medical firm has announced it will launch a $3 billion expansion of its Kenosha County facility and will bring 750 jobs to the area.

Indiana-based Eli Lilly and Company on Thursday announced it will start construction next year. The project site is a former Nexus Pharmaceuticals facility in Pleasant Prairie which the company acquired in April 2024. Lilly officials didn’t share how large the expanded facility footprint will be.

The expanded facility will focus on manufacturing injectable medicines, device assembly and packaging for different medicines, company officials said. It’s part of a strategy to meet demand for diabetes, obesity and future pipeline medicines, officials added.

The investment will expand the company’s injectable product manufacturing network to meet demand for diabetes, obesity and future pipeline medicines, company officials said.

“Today’s announcement represents our single largest U.S. manufacturing investment outside our home state of Indiana and will add to our ability to expand capacity to make both our existing and future pipeline of medicines right here in the Midwest,” said Edgardo Hernandez, executive vice president and president of Lilly Manufacturing Operations, in a statement. “We look forward to bringing high-wage, advanced manufacturing, engineering and science jobs to people in Wisconsin, a state that is becoming a critical geography in our global manufacturing operations,” he added.

Lilly has spent $4 billion in Wisconsin acquiring, expanding, buying land and the adjacent warehouse, company officials said. Since 2020, Lilly committed $23 billion to construction, expansion and acquisition of manufacturing sites worldwide, officials added.

The expanded site calls for jobs such as operators, technicians, engineers and scientists, and will create more than 2,000 construction jobs during the expansion project’s construction, company officials said. Manufacturing equipment will include automated systems, guided vehicles and robotics and digital automation will play multiple roles in the facility’s manufacturing processes, officials added.

“Southeastern Wisconsin has seen tremendous growth over the past year with major companies announcing significant expansions, and we are thrilled to add Lilly to that growing list with their $3 billion expansion that will add 750 highly skilled, family-supporting jobs to Kenosha County,” Gov. Tony Evers said in a statement. “As a U.S. Regional Tech Hub, Wisconsin is a national leader in personalized medicine and biohealth, and through this partnership with Lilly, we’re going to keep advancing research and innovation and bolstering Wisconsin’s manufacturing industry, all while supporting workers, families, and patients across the state and the world,” he added.

The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. was a partner with Eli Lilly to meet site selection and workforce needs and the two organizations will continue working together, said Missy Hughes, CEO of WEDC.

“Wisconsin’s status as a Regional Tech Hub in biohealth makes it a perfect fit for an innovative, blue-chip company like Eli Lilly,” Hughes said in a statement.

The Pleasant Prairie facility has seen development and the changing of hands over the years. In 2019, Evers and the owners of Nexus Pharmaceuticals announced the location for the company’s first sterile drug manufacturing facility, boosted by $1.5 million in performance-based tax credits from WEDC for facility construction.

In 2021, Nexus cut the ribbon on a $100 million, 84,000-square-foot facility in Kenosha County to manufacture sterile, injectable drugs, governor’s officials said. This was the first facility of its kind built in the U.S. in more than 30 years, officials added.

In July, Evers and U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin announced $49 million to grow Wisconsin as a medicine and biohealth sector. The U.S. Economic Development Administration picked the state to be a regional tech hub with BioForward Wisconsin as the leading agency.

Lilly officials said they will partner with local higher education institutions and support community initiatives in the state.

Other major projects ongoing across the state include the Microsoft data center in Mount Pleasant, the $560 million Kikkoman facility in Jefferson and the $195 million Nestlé Purina expansion in Jefferson.