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Eli Lilly and Company Executive Vice President and NAM board member Edgardo Hernandez and other Lilly leaders hosted NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons along with state policymakers, the Indiana Manufacturers Association, education leaders and media recently for a tour of Lilly’s facilities. The day’s events showcased Lilly’s investments in manufacturing—with stops at Indianapolis’ Innovation District and the construction site of Lilly’s new major pharmaceutical manufacturing campus.

• The visit highlighted the NAM and Lilly’s mutual commitment to policies that increase supply chain resiliency, limit regulatory burdens and support the recruitment and retention of talented employees.

Lilly’s investments: Lilly has increased its U.S. investments massively in recent years, announcing more than $50 billion in capital expansion commitments to boost domestic production of medicines since 2020.

• This includes $9 billion for two new manufacturing sites in Boone County, Indiana. Other new U.S. sites announced since 2020 include two in North Carolina, as well as others in Alabama, Texas and Pennsylvania. Lilly also acquired a new site in Wisconsin with an additional expansion commitment.

In Indiana: Lilly has committed $13.5 billion to manufacturing and research expansions since 2022, which is the largest capital investment in the state’s history and located in the LEAP Lebanon Innovation District.

• The first-of-its-kind Lilly Medicine Foundry, aimed at streamlining “lab-to-patient” scale-up for new medicines, will receive $4.5 billion and is slated to be fully operational by 2027. In addition, $9 billion will support the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients for Lilly’s fast-growing diabetes and obesity portfolio as well as advanced therapeutics.
• Meanwhile, since 2020, Lilly has invested $3.3 billion for modernizing existing research and production infrastructure at Lilly’s Indianapolis manufacturing location.
• Indiana has reciprocated, offering state-level incentives for Lilly’s manufacturing and workforce development investments at LEAP.

Workforce in focus: Hernandez kicked off the tour, which began at the new Ivy Tech Manufacturing Innovation Training Center in the 16 Tech Innovation District and was attended by government officials, industry executives, academic leaders and local stakeholders—emphasizing Lilly’s role in advancing Indiana’s life sciences sector.

• Leaders discussed Indiana’s workforce model—highlighted by Ivy Tech and Purdue partnerships—competitive positioning in attracting life sciences companies and the importance of the LEAP Learning and Training Center as a catalytic investment. ​The message: full state support for the LEAP Center to bolster Indiana’s biomanufacturing credibility and competitiveness.
• ​Students brought Industry 4.0 technologies to life for leaders, demonstrating smart manufacturing systems, robotics and computerized machinery that mirror real-world pharmaceutical production.

Taking the LEAP: Leaders then got a look at where Lilly’s next generation of manufacturing is taking shape—at the LEAP Lebanon Innovation District—a 9,000-acre, state-backed hub for advanced industries along Indiana’s I-65 corridor, where Lilly is building a major pharmaceutical manufacturing campus and new Lilly Medicine Foundry.

• As an anchor tenant, Lilly is investing $13.5 billion to build a major pharmaceutical manufacturing campus—the largest active pharmaceutical ingredient investment in U.S. history—alongside its new Medicine Foundry, integrating R&D and advanced manufacturing.
• Across this entire campus, Lilly expects to create more than 1,600 high-skilled jobs.
• The investment builds on plans first announced at an event in D.C. last year, where Timmons spoke alongside Hernandez, Lilly Chair and CEO Dave Ricks, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) highlighting how the pro-growth 2017 tax reforms made new U.S. manufacturing sites like Lilly’s possible.

On the record: Hernandez and Timmons sat down with the Indianapolis Business Journal (subscription) at 16 Tech, followed by an on-camera interview for Inside INdiana Business, where the two highlighted the scale and strategic importance of Lilly’s growing Indiana manufacturing footprint, how the 2017 tax reforms contributed to the new Lilly site in the LEAP district, the Lilly and Ivy Tech partnership to arm students with skills they need to work in manufacturing and what the NAM and companies like Lilly are doing to strengthen America’s industrial base.

• “I think Indiana has, largely over the course of the last couple of decades, really gotten it right,” Timmons told the Indianapolis Business Journal. “They understood the importance of manufacturing to a strong overall economy, the multiplier effect of manufacturing job creation and investment and what that really does for a state and for the tax base in particular.”
• Hernandez continued, “[w]hen you make medicines and pharmaceuticals, you have an infrastructure you have to maintain, just to [retain] a capacity to make medicine. Those requirements continuously evolve, so the company is making the investments to ensure it can remain competitive within the industry.”
• On INside Indiana Business, Timmons said that education is one of the big keys to getting more workers on board. “Ivy Tech and Purdue [have created] programs to help young people get those skills early on, and also be a part of an earn-and-learn internship program that allows young people to actually earn college credits [while in high school], but also to earn a living at the same time,” Timmons said.

Time well spent: “Anchoring pharmaceutical manufacturing in America starts with states like Indiana getting the fundamentals right: workforce, infrastructure, policy,” Hernandez said. “NAM’s voice reinforced how special that is.”

The last word: “When you look at companies like Lilly, which have made some incredible investments here in the state, how do you ensure that the supply chain is here to be able to support the continued growth of that sector?,” Timmons told the Indianapolis Business Journal. “Other states are trying to figure that out, too.”