Eli Lilly announced plans for a new €2.6 billion plant in the Netherlands on Monday. It’s not an announcement that would usually be of any interest to an Irish reader, unless that plant was affecting Lilly’s Irish operations or jobs. And it’s not.
But it is significant nonetheless.
Ten months into 2025, the year has been notable so far for the dearth of significant investment announcements from the pharmaceutical sector in European Union countries.
Big Pharma has focused all its attention in generally docile bending of the knee to US president Donald Trump as it tries to deflect him from imposing tariffs on the sector by announcing hundreds of billions of dollars in multiyear investment programmes into the United States.
Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Roche have each committed to investing $50 billion. Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, AbbVie, Gilead, Bristol Myers Squibb, Sanofi and Eli Lilly itself have all committed to investing between $10 billion and $40 billion, with others, like MSD, Regeneron, Biogen, Abbott and Amgen have also made significant commitments.
Lilly’s plans for a new Dutch oral medicines plant, which will create 500 jobs, are an outlier. And while picking his words carefully, Lilly chairman and chief executive David Ricks and his team were keen to make the point that the company was not going to be cowed from investing outside the US.
“With extensive investments already under way in the US, our planned expansion in Europe further strengthens our ability to deliver medicines to patients worldwide,” he said. “Localised manufacturing ensures we can quickly respond to meet regional demand and accelerate distribution within Europe.”
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In the age of Trump, when image is everything, Lilly’s announcement can almost be seen as an act of defiance. It shouldn’t be. After all, the quest for localised production is one of the driving forces behind Trump’s pressure on Big Pharma to reshore production.
However, Lilly is telling the Trump White House that it does not intend to devote all its resources to the US market. And it is the first Big Pharma company this year to do so.
Can the State expect similar announcements over the next six to 12 months? There’s no certainty on that but in a climate of worry that could see its substantial pharma base eroded, it does offer hope.
