Novo Nordisk Builds New Raw Materials Warehouse

Reutersreports that Novo Nordisk will invest 500 million Danish Krone (approximately $75 million US dollars) into a new 19,000 m² warehouse in Hillerød, Denmark. The warehouse will handle all inbound raw materials for Novo Nordisk's production in Denmark and will have a capacity of around 17,000 pallets of product, according to the news outlet. Filling, assembly, and the packaging of diabetes finished products will occur at the new warehouse; the manufacture of a hemophilia API, molding activities, and device R&D will also occur at the Hillerød location, according to Business Standard. The facility groundbreaking will occur on Sept. 3, 2015, and the warehouse is expected to be on line at some point in 2017.

Prior to the announcement about the new Hillerød warehouse, the company said it would invest approximately $2 billion into two new production facilities over the next two years in Clayton, North Carolina, and Måløv, Denmark, specifically for the manufacture of semaglutide, an oral biologic for the treatment of diabetes. According to an email from Novo Nordisk spokesperson Katrine Rud von Sperling, oral semaglutide would be first in class, and if approved by FDA, would be the first (and only) oral biologic for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Other older, non-biologic oral medications, such as the dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP4) and the sodium–glucose co-transporter type 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors-which are typically used earlier than injectables such as glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) or insulin-would be main competitors to semaglutide, according to Rud von Sperling.

Sources: Reuters, Business Standard