Roche is committing $50 billion while Regeneron inked a $3 billion manufacturing deal with Fujifilm, allowing the pharma to “nearly double” its U.S. large-scale manufacturing capacity.
As President Donald Trump continues to threaten the pharma industry with sector-specific tariffs, more and more companies are putting money into U.S. manufacturing. On Tuesday, Roche and Regeneron hopped on this train, each announcing hefty investments to beef up their production capacities in the country.
Roche is injecting $50 billion into its U.S. footprint. That money that will go toward constructing a new gene therapy plant in Pennsylvania, an R&D center in Massachusetts and a new manufacturing site in Indiana dedicated to its continuous glucose monitoring products. Roche will also erect a new 900,000-square-foot production plant for its investigational next-generation weight loss products, though the company has yet to announce where this site will go.
Tuesday’s investment will also allow Roche to upgrade its existing sites in the U.S., which currently include 13 manufacturing plants and 15 R&D facilities. All told, the company expects to add over 12,000 new positions in the U.S., including some 6,500 construction jobs.
Importantly, once these commitments come fully online, “Roche will export medicines from the US than it imports,” according to Tuesday’s release.
Meanwhile, Regeneron is pumping more than $3 billion into its U.S. operations through a Tuesday deal with Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies. The agreement will allow the pharma to “nearly double” its large-scale manufacturing capacity in the U.S., bolstered by Fujifilm’s new biopharmaceutical facility in North Carolina.
It is unclear how many new opportunities the Fujifilm partnership will open up, though Regeneron noted in its release that the deal will help “support high-paying jobs in the region.” The pharma has added some 7,000 jobs in the U.S. over the past five years. Currently, it is expanding its campus in Tarrytown, New York, with roughly 1,000 new full-time jobs upcoming, as per Tuesday’s release.
Regeneron and Roche are the two latest Big Pharma players that have responded to Trump’s tariff threats. In February, Eli Lilly announced that it would pour some $27 billion into its U.S. presence, constructing four new production plants over the next five years. This expansion, Lilly said at the time, would open around 3,000 new jobs for engineers and scientists.
Johnson & Johnson followed suit last month, unveiling a $55 billion manufacturing and R&D package in the U.S., helping to fund three new production facilities and the expansion of its existing sites. And earlier this month, Novartis announced that it would be investing $23 billion into its U.S. business to construct a research innovation hub in California as well as six new manufacturing plants, two of which will be dedicated to radioligand therapies.
