Eli Lilly received over 300 proposals from states and localities competing to host its new U.S. manufacturing plants.
The company led one of the most public and competitive national site selection processes in recent memory. Unlike other pharma companies announcing reshoring commitments in broad dollar terms, Lilly laid out a specific four-plant, $27 billion campaign – and invited states to compete.
Pennsylvania ($3.5B) completes the map, joining Lilly's existing footprint of U.S. manufacturing sites in Indiana, Wisconsin, and North Carolina.
The facility will produce Zepbound – what Lilly CEO David Ricks called "the world's bestselling medicine" – along with retatrutide, a next-generation weight loss drug that will be manufactured at scale in the U.S. for the first time.
Lilly’s obesity and diabetes medicines now account for more than half its revenue and in November the company became the first healthcare company in history to reach a $1 trillion market cap.
The Big Picture: Pharma is one of the engines driving America's industrial resurgence. The sector logged more than $475 billion in U.S. CapEx commitments in the past year, according to JLL.
Understanding how Lilly landed in the Lehigh Valley is to understand how states are competing to anchor the next generation of American industry.
That’s why I didn’t hesitate to drive 3 hours and stand in 7-degree weather to cover the historic moment.
Zach Silber
Editor-in-Chief
Standard & Works
1. 🎬 Behind the Scenes
Lilly CEO Dave Ricks and Gov. Josh Shapiro hold a press conference following the formal announcement
Governor Josh Shapiro revealed a twist at Friday’s announcement: Pennsylvania lost in a bid to be Lilly's third site and refused to quit.
"We were not successful on that third site," Shapiro said. "But we knew we were gonna compete like crazy for the fourth. I think Lilly had a sense of how serious we were."
Standard & Works got the first post-game interview with Pennsylvania Secretary of Community and Economic Development Rick Siger.
"Our folks would not take no for an answer," Siger told me. "That started at the top with Governor Shapiro and his discussions with David Ricks, but it worked at every single level of our department."
The win validates a strategy the Shapiro Administration put in place when it took office:
"When we came in three years ago, we set out to compete," Siger said. "We built a plan. We focused on life sciences. We created the resources for programs like PA SITES. And that all came together here to win one of the marquee life sciences projects we've ever seen in Pennsylvania."
Another key piece of that strategy: the creation of BusinessPA, integrating previously fragmented economic development functions into a single organization. "We have a new tool set and a new attitude to go and win projects,” Siger told us.
2. 🎯 How Pennsylvania Delivered
Lilly CEO David Ricks and Gov. Josh Shapiro take questions from Standard & Works – a very cool moment!
At a post-game press conference, I asked Lilly CEO David Ricks what advice he'd give governors competing for investment now that he'd seen 300 proposals.
He named three things:
🤝 Partnership
"The first is partnership – the commitment to solve problems together."
“There was a lot of back and forth here and we worked through all those things," Ricks said. "Some governors and state teams think of this activity as static. This was a dynamic process. I applaud Pennsylvania for what they built – that's why they're competing and winning this kind of deal."
Siger described the local coordination:
"Super tight collaboration with the local partners – Lehigh Valley development folks, local township folks, county folks – all coming together to showcase this really outstanding site in Fogelsville and problem-solve alongside the company."
The partnership extended to Washington. Senator Dave McCormick was in D.C. voting during the announcement, so I asked Shapiro about the Senator's role – knowing that the two had worked hand-in-hand to land the $20 billion Amazon deal last year, forming what we've called at Standard & Works a "two-person economic development SWAT team."
"We worked together on this as well," Shapiro said. "There were elements that touched the federal government. I reached out to Senator McCormick and his team, and they were very responsive and worked with us to get this done."
The alignment is intentional. Pennsylvania's economic development strategy prioritizes life sciences as one of five pillars. McCormick's first Annual Letter to Pennsylvanians, released last month, named life sciences a priority and previewed some of the recent success:
“I have fought to protect research funding and to build a stronger pharmaceutical manufacturing base on top of it. More good news of pharmaceutical manufacturing coming to Pennsylvania is on the horizon,” McCormick wrote in the letter.
👷 Workforce
"We need a variety of types of workers, and sometimes that's ready on the ground, but rarely," Ricks explained.
"So it's about partnership with local institutions. Upskilling from trades to build the site, but also all the way through to technicians who operate the site. Engineers and scientists who will lead the site."
Ricks noted Lilly's approach to workforce development:
"Providing apprenticeships at our sites, working with community colleges and universities as you have here to help people understand what it would take to work in a company like ours, align curriculum, and really skill up people for the jobs of the future."
Paul Anthony, president of Lehigh Valley Building Trades, spoke at the event and thanked Ricks for his “understanding on apprenticeship and how that changes lives."
Zoom Out: Workforce was a key factor throughout Lilly’s campaign. In Houston, San Jacinto College's biomanufacturing program – a partnership with Dublin-based NIBRT, viewed as the gold standard for pharma workforce training – was an attractive asset.
🏎 Speed
"The currency of business is time," Ricks said.
"Every product we make will go off patent and become worth zero. So every day we delay is the real cost to us. Things like permitting reform, ability to move fast constructing a site, site readiness from day one – those are critical elements. That's why we're here in Lehigh Valley."
Lilly is receiving assistance through Pennsylvania's Office of Transformation and Opportunity (OTO) via the PA Permit Fast Track Program.
Michelle Comerford of BLS & Co., the venerable site selection firm that works with Eli Lilly, cited OTO as "an excellent partner" in our recent briefing: The Need for Speed.
The numbers back it up: between 2023 and 2024, Pennsylvania cut DEP permit processing by 65%, Labor & Industry processing by 89%, and Highway Occupancy Permits by 32%.
"Already, Ben and his team are working with Lilly to ensure our permitting process moves quickly," Shapiro said of OTO chief Ben Kirshner. "We are ready to deliver months ahead of schedule."
Go Deeper: Read our briefing “The Need for Speed” which breaks down why speed is the defining competitive advantage for U.S. site selection in 2026 – including in Virginia's $4.5 billion AstraZeneca win and Mississippi's $20 billion xAI data center deal.
3. 🧬 A Cluster Takes Shape
Gov. Shapiro and Ricks “pin” Lilly on a map of the region
The Lilly announcement is the latest in a string of life sciences wins forming a corridor across southeastern Pennsylvania.
“This is a big life sciences pharma manufacturing project," Siger told me. "Notice it's not in the suburbs of Philadelphia. It's here in the Lehigh Valley."
The geographic expansion is intentional:
"Being able to expand that cluster northward so that the broad benefits of this industry – its workforce impacts, its downstream economic impacts – can be spread more broadly across Pennsylvania. That's been a longstanding goal of ours. This is a huge step in that direction."
Pennsylvania’s pharma stack:
September 2025: GSK announced a new biologics flex factory at Upper Merion, part of a $1.2 billion advanced manufacturing investment that includes the company’s largest single U.S. investment ever.
November 2025: Lilly announced it would open Gateway Labs, a 44,000 square foot R&D incubator in Center City – putting Philadelphia alongside Boston, San Francisco, and San Diego as the only U.S. cities hosting Lilly's biotech partnership program.
January 2026: J&J announced that a next-generation cell therapy manufacturing plant will be built in Pennsylvania (the exact site hasn’t been specified).
Also add in: Eurofins Lancaster Laboratories ($147.5M), Apozeal Pharmaceuticals ($4.1M), and B. Braun ($20M) expansions, and a pattern emerges: R&D plus manufacturing, spreading north from Philadelphia into Montgomery County and now the Lehigh Valley.
That's how clusters form, Jay Biggins of BLS & Co., explained to us in October:
"It is possible to create a pretty serious cluster in a hurry around two or three very large announcements. Workers can live within commuting distance of multiple facilities, have mobility without moving. Those are the reasons why clusters are so powerful."
4. 👀 The View From North Carolina
EDPNC CEO Christopher Chung joins the Standard & Works Show in December
Pennsylvania's win puts it in even more direct competition with the dominant force in U.S. life sciences: North Carolina.
The Research Triangle remains the industry's center of gravity – home to 108 biopharmaceutical manufacturing facilities, including a slew of recent commitments and groundbreakings:
Last month, Johnson & Johnson announced a multibillion-dollar facility in Wilson County – building on a $2 billion manufacturing campus that broke ground last year.
In August, J&J committed $2 billion more to manufacturing space at Fujifilm's Holly Springs biomanufacturing site.
In December, Novartis broke ground on a 700,000 square foot flagship manufacturing hub that will create 700 new jobs by 2030 as part of Novartis's $23 billion U.S. investment pledge.
Biogen is investing an additional $2 billion in its Research Triangle Park footprint.
Novo Nordisk's $4.1 billion GLP-1 expansion continues.
Lilly already has existing facilities in Concord and Raleigh-Durham.
With all this momentum, some site selectors have started asking whether North Carolina’s market is getting crowded.
Biggins said last fall: "In the minds of some, the market may be a little overcooked" – competition for construction, labor, talent, and sites is fierce.
Can North Carolina keep winning?
"We see no signs that momentum is slowing," Melissa Smith, Senior Vice President of Business Recruitment at the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina (EDPNC), told Standard & Works in a statement.
"While economic conditions and consumer behavior will always change, one constant for business success is talent. That's where North Carolina continues to stand apart."
EDPNC CEO Christopher Chung was pointed about Pennsylvania's emergence in an interview with Standard & Works in December.
He acknowledged Governor Shapiro has been "saying all the right things in economic development" but added: "It's still going to take some time to address and fix some of those things that may make Pennsylvania a little bit less attractive from a regulatory standpoint or a tax standpoint. Then demographic trends are a whole other issue altogether.”
For now, Pennsylvania just answered with $3.5 billion.
The race continues.
5. 📸 Worth 50 Billion Words
With Pennsylvania selected, Lilly revealed its full U.S. manufacturing footprint – representing $50 billion of investment announced since 2020.
