Eli Lilly's $4.5bn Indiana Manufacturing Investment

Eli Lilly and Company (Lilly) announced an additional US$4.5bn investment across two of its three Lebanon sites in Indiana.

This brings the company's total capital expansion commitments since 2020 to more than US$21bn.

The investments will cover advanced pharmaceutical ingredients (API) as well as genetic medicine manufacturing. 

This follows rapid growth in its two medications Mounjaro and Zepbound, which helped boost Lilly’s Q1 revenue in 2026 by 56% over the previous year. 

David A. Ricks, Lilly's Chair and CEO, says: "When our Lebanon API site opens in 2027, it will be the largest API production site in US history, a commitment we chose to build here, at home."

Expanding pharmaceuticals manufacturing 

The investment will incorporate new process designs and technologies at Lilly Lebanon API, one of the company's future active pharmaceutical ingredient sites. 

It will also cover Lilly Lebanon Advanced Therapies, its first dedicated genetic medicine manufacturing facility.

Lilly Lebanon Advanced Therapies is designed to support both clinical and commercial production of advanced therapies that target disease at the genetic level. It will include a full spectrum of genetic medicine modalities from research-stage development through large-scale commercial supply. 

Lilly says that designing and building for these modalities required developing new manufacturing processes "without established commercial precedent".

Three sites in Indiana

Lilly Lebanon Advanced Therapies facility is the first of three planned sites on the Lebanon campus in Indiana, which will also include Lilly Lebanon API and the Lilly Medicine Foundry.

David says: "Lilly's legacy of firsts in Indiana continues today and the best measure of that legacy is what we do next.

"From genetic medicines that could one day prevent disease at its source, to Foundayo, a pill making weight loss treatment accessible to millions, we are not just discovering the medicines of the future, we are building the world's most advanced plants to make them.

In April of 2026 Lilly released a weight loss tablet called Foundayo after it was approved by the FDA.

Eli Lilly's US manufacturing

Lebanon, Indiana is the cornerstone of Lilly's domestic manufacturing buildout and is the site where it manufactures two of its key products, Mounjaro and Zepbound, which have been key to its strong growth.

In the first quarter of 2026, Lilly’s worldwide revenue was US$19.8bn, an increase of 56% compared with Q1 2025, driven by a 65% increase in volume. 

Lilly’s revenue from key products grew to US$13.4bn in the same period, led by Mounjaro and Zepbound.

In 2024, Lilly announced plans to make both Zepbound and Mounjaro, the most prescribed injectable medications for weight management and type two diabetes respectively, at its Lebanon API site. 

Mounjaro and Zepbound

The active ingredient in both Zepbound and Mounjaro is tirzepatide. The medications are glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists, effective in the treatment of type two diabetes and for weight loss. 

In Q1 of 2026, Lilly’s worldwide Mounjaro revenue increased 125% to US$8.7bn.

In the first quarter of 2026, Zepbound revenue in the US alone increased 79% to US$4.1bn, compared with $2.3bn the year before. 

This massive increase in revenue has likely fuelled the expansion in its manufacturing facilities.