AstraZeneca has unveiled a newly expanded manufacturing facility in Texas to the tune of $445m, because the drugmaker goals to satisfy rising demand for hyperkalaemia remedy Lokelma (sodium zirconium cyclosilicate).
The close to half a billion-dollar growth at AstraZeneca’s manufacturing facility in Coppell, Texas, provides a brand new 9,000ft² constructing, which is able to home two manufacturing strains. The funding may even fund upgrades for drug substance and drug product laboratory testing, together with extra house for warehousing and administration. General, AstraZeneca says the growth will double the manufacturing of Lokelma.
Lokelma is an oral suspension remedy that lowers potassium ranges within the blood. The drug was US Meals and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved in 2018, three years after being acquired by AstraZeneca in a takeover of ZS Pharma for $2.7bn.
Lokelma generated $542m in 2024, a rise of 32% from 2023. Evaluation by GlobalData’s Pharma Intelligence Centre forecasts annual world gross sales to succeed in $938m by 2031.
GlobalData is the dad or mum firm of Pharmaceutical Know-how.
AstraZeneca’s Texas facility, which employs greater than 250 individuals, is the only provider of Lokelma to greater than 50 nations, together with the US.
“Our manufacturing facility in Coppell serves as each a crucial pillar in world healthcare and has performed an necessary position in supporting the native workforce over the previous 10 years. The growth underscores our dedication to sufferers and assist for Texas’ long-term imaginative and prescient for scientific development and innovation,” mentioned Jim Fox, AstraZeneca’s senior vp of Americas Provide Operations.
The $445m funding into Coppell comes per week after AstraZeneca commenced building on its new $4.5bn lively pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturing facility in Virginia. The work in each Coppell and Virginia is a part of a wider $50bn outlay by the corporate to bolster manufacturing capabilities within the US by 2030.
Reducing reliance on medicine manufactured abroad has been a key ambition of the Trump administration. In Might, Trump signed an govt order that may streamline the trail for pharma firms to construct new US drug manufacturing manufacturing websites and enhance inspection instances for US services. The FDA then launched a scheme that might make it simpler for brand new services to be permitted in August 2025.
AstraZeneca is one in all many non-US huge pharma firms to show its consideration to the US. Swiss huge pharma Roche outlaid $50bn price of funding within the US, which is able to generate greater than 1,000 jobs in new and expanded services. British drugmaker GSK mentioned it would make investments $30bn within the US over the following 5 years.
