Obesity drug maker Novo Nordisk said on Friday it will spend $6 billion to boost production in Denmark, although its chief executive warned the industry was far from being able to produce enough weight-loss drugs to meet global demand.
Novo Nordisk has had phenomenal success with its anti-obesity drug, Wegovy, but has scrambled to address shortages that have forced it to limit the number of patients.
The World Health Organization describes obesity as a "rising epidemic" and estimates that more than 1 billion adults globally will be living with obesity in 2030.
"With the capacity we're building and what competition is building, I believe we are far from getting to a billion people," CEO Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen told Reuters in an interview.
"I believe we will continuously have to invest," he added.
This week, U.S. and British regulators approved Eli Lilly's weight-loss treatment, while AstraZeneca invested in licensing an experimental pill from China's Eccogene.
Enormous demand is expected to drive annual sales of obesity drugs to $100 billion within a decade, with as many as 10 different drugs on the market, according to analysts.
Jorgensen said he welcomed competition and that the approval of Eli Lilly's drug "will further fuel market growth."
Novo said more than 42 billion Danish crowns ($6.0 billion) it will spend on expanding its Kalundborg site in Denmark will boost capacity for manufacturing active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) as well as across other parts of its supply chain, such as packaging.
This will include lifting capacity for GLP-1 products such as semaglutide, the API in Wegovy as well as the company's Ozempic diabetes treatment.
A portion of the investment was included in a 25 billion crowns capital expenditure plan announced in February. That is up from 12 billion in 2022 and 6.3 billion the year before.
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