Global biotech company Amgen completed construction on one manufacturing facility as it started work on another that will bring more than $1.5 billion in investment and about 700 jobs to the southwestern Wake County town of Holly Springs by 2030.
The dual activities presented Amgen with a unique opportunity, says Paul Lewus, vice president and site head of Amgen North Carolina. “This is a rare double win: A double win for Amgen, for North Carolina, and most importantly for the patients we serve.”
Amgen announced in 2021 a $550 million investment that would add 335 jobs to Holly Springs. In December, the Thousand Oaks, California-based company announced it would add another $1 billion investment to build a second plant at the 118-acre site. The state is providing more than $18 million in incentives for the two projects.
The two drug substance facilities will be similar in size and combined total more than 500,000 square feet. The new positions will pay on average more than $91,500 a year. Amgen has already hired about 250 employees for the first plant with about 75% of those workers coming from North Carolina, Lewus says.
Coming back to North Carolina for a second investment was made easier by the state’s “life sciences ecosystem,” says Lewus, including the NCBioTech and Wake Tech Community College.
A recently started Amgen apprenticeship program at Wake Tech will include six months of classroom instruction and then a year of on-the-job training. “It’s a fantastic way for us to build our workforce of tomorrow and for the apprentices, it’s a wonderful opportunity to get introduced to biotechnology jobs,” says Lewus.
While Amgen looked at several locations for expansion, the Holly Springs site had advantages, he added. “We were already building one manufacturing facility there so you can leverage existing infrastructure when you already have the land purchased,” says Lewus.
The plants will make general medicines, and medications for rare diseases, inflammation and patients with serious illnesses like heart disease and cancer.
The new plant will feature both traditional processes and next-generation technologies to increase efficiencies, says Lewus. It will have a smaller physical footprint and use 50% less water than a traditional plant, supporting Amgen’s sustainability goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2027.
Founded in 1980, Amgen is one of the 30 companies that comprise the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and it has more than 27,000 employees worldwide. About 14,000 are in the U.S. The company reported $28.2 billion in revenue last year.
This is Amgen’s first manufacturing facility in North Carolina, and the company wants to make a good first impression with peer companies, community colleges and four-year institutions, says Lewus. “We want to make sure Amgen has a very positive presence in the local community,” he says.