Big Pharma’s U.S. manufacturing investment pledges continue to pile up on the mainland and beyond. In the industry’s latest nine-figure capital investment project, Amgen plans a $650 million expansion of its sprawling site in Juncos, Puerto Rico.
The company, which boasts a multidecade history on the island, plans to create hundreds of new jobs with the Puerto Rico expansion, according to a Sept. 26 release. Amgen’s expansion in Juncos will support increased drug production at the biologics site.
Amgen first established its Juncos site in 1993 and has significantly expanded it along the way. A 30-year celebration of the site’s history, posted on Amgen’s website in 2022, shows that the manufacturing complex started with just one building and about 30 staffers. By 2022, the facility grew to more than 20 buildings with thousands of employees.
In 2003, Amgen revealed plans to splash out $800 million for new plants, quality labs, packaging infrastructure and more in Juncos. In 2005, the company touted the facility as boasting 1 million square feet.
Nowadays, Amgen’s expansion plans coincide with the Trump administration’s onshoring push for the pharmaceutical industry. In a Thursday evening post on the social media site Truth Social, President Donald Trump said that starting Oct. 1, branded drugmakers that aren’t building U.S. facilities will be subject to a 100% tariff on imported medicines.
Amgen, for its part, has been on U.S. investment blitz as of late. Early this month, the company revealed a $600 million investment in its home city of Thousand Oaks, California, for a new R&D center that will host hundreds of employees.
On the manufacturing side of the business, the past year has seen Amgen reveal plans for a $900 million expansion in Ohio and a $1 billion project in North Carolina.
The company isn’t alone, of course, as many large drugmakers work to shore up their domestic supply chains and avoid the threat of punishing tariffs. Between the likes of AbbVie, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Biogen, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Gilead Sciences, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co., Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Regeneron, Roche and Sanofi, the industry’s U.S. investment pledges have tallied into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
