Eli Lilly and Company has announced plans to build a new $3-billion manufacturing facility in Katwijk, the Netherlands, to expand Lilly’s capacity to produce oral solid  medicines in cardiometabolic health, neuroscience, oncology, and immunology 

The new site will also be among those that will manufacture Lilly’s first oral, small-molecule GLP-1 receptor agonist, orforglipron. The company expects to submit orforglipron to global regulatory agencies for obesity by the end of 2025. Last month (October 2025), Lilly announced an  investment of more than $1.2 billion to expand and modernize its Lilly del Caribe manufacturing site in Carolina, Puerto Rico, to expand solid dosage manufacturing capacity, including for orforglipron. Construction on the expanded oral solid medicine product manufacturing facility in Puerto Rico is estimated to begin in 2026, with plans to start producing medicine by the end of 2028. Construction of the new facility in the Netherlands is expected to begin next year (2026), with Lilly’s investment contingent upon the finalization of government permits and local approvals.

The new site in the Netherlands will add to Lilly’s manufacturing footprint in the European Union (EU), which  includes four existing sites across France, Ireland, Italy and Spain. Since 2020, the company announced plans for three additional EU sites, including new greenfield sites in Ireland, Germany, and now, the Netherlands. 

Like the facility in Puerto Rico, the new facility in the Netherlands will meet the needs of Lilly’s growing portfolio of oral solid medicines. Capabilities will include dock-to-dock automation and material flow, paperless manufacturing, process analytical technology and spray-dried dispersion, which allows oral medicines to be effectively absorbed. 

These expansions are a part of the company’s previously announced $50-billion capital investment commitment to expand US manufacturing capacity. The company previously shared plans to build sites in Texas and Virginia earlier this year (2025), with two additional locations to be announced in the next few months (as reported on November 3, 2025). These new sites are part of Lilly’s broader efforts to expand existing US manufacturing sites to increase capacity. 

Source: Eli Lilly and Company