Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis announced that it has finalized plans to open an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturing plant in Morrisville, North Carolina. The facility is the seventh that the company has announced since April 2025 after publicizing its intentions to invest US$23 billion in US-based manufacturing and R&D.

In a public release, the company stated that the new site will produce APIs for RNA therapeutics, solid dosage tablets, and capsules. The firm says that the facility will support both current and future therapies while strengthening Novartis’s US infrastructure for the benefit of US patients.

The facility will span 56,200 square feet, bolstering Novartis’s robust presence in North Carolina as part of its greater North Carolina Manufacturing Hub, composed of three sites and five facilities. It is one of two facilities planned for the Morrisville site, with the other dedicated to producing and packaging solid dose tablets and capsules. The company has stated on its website that the Morrisville site will open in 2028.

“Last year, we committed to adding seven new facilities in the US, and today we finalize our plans to expand our US manufacturing and R&D footprint in the US,” said Vas Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis. "By building a connected, end-to-end footprint, we are strengthening our ability to locally develop, produce, and deliver medicines at scale, enabling timely access to innovation for patients in the US.”

Novartis’s recent US manufacturing push has reinforced the company’s stated commitment to “manufacture all key Novartis medicines for US patients in the US.” Many of the builds and expansions announced and opened in the past year have specialized in radioligand therapies (RLTs). Earlier this year, Novartis announced that it is building RLT manufacturing facilities in Winter Park, Florida, and Denton, Texas.

North Carolina continues to cement its reputation as a biopharma manufacturing hotspot, with several high-profile projects announced within the past year. In January, Genentech doubled its investment in a Holly Springs facility to $2 billion, focusing on metabolic medicines. AbbVie is building a $1.4 billion pharmaceutical campus in Durham, integrating advanced manufacturing technologies to support immunology and oncology programs. Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson is pouring billions of dollars into the state through multiple investments, including a $2 billion contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) partnership with Fujifilm.