Barely three months after announcing the project, Genentech broke ground on a $700 million fill-and-finish factory in Holly Springs.
“By the end of the year you’ll see dirt moving, you’ll see things starting to go up,’” said Fritz Brittenbender, the drugmaker’s global public-affairs chief. “Our goal is that as soon as we can, we’ll be shovels-in-the-ground.”
Genentech CEO Ashley Magargee and Switzerland’s ambassador to the U.S., Ralf Heckner, attended a ceremony that attracted Gov. Josh Stein and a bevy of local and state officials.
“We are amongst the most reliable investors and consistent [investors] in America,” Heckner said. “Here in North Carolina alone, there are 53 Swiss companies that are employing 17,000 people, with another 7,000 jobs supported through trade flows.”
Genentech’s corporate parent, Roche, has its headquarters in Basel, Switzerland. Genentech is based in South San Francisco, California.
Genentech’s first East Coast factory is the state’s second-biggest economic development announcement of the year, trailing.JetZero’s planned airplane factory in Greensboro.
North Carolina beat out Ohio for the project, after offering a $44.9 million package of state and local incentives in return for the company’s promise to create at least 420 jobs. The positions will pay an annual average wage of $120,000, the company has said.
The drugmaker and its Swiss parent see the Holly Springs site as critical to their plans to get into the anti-obesity drug sector now dominated by Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly.
Roche has been developing its own GLP-1 variants and has licensed related drugs.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty in the marketplace right now, but the one thing about the product we’re going to be manufacturing here, it’s one of the futures of our company and it’s a product that’s going to be life-changing across this world,” Brittenbender said.
Magargee said the Tar Heel State’s advantages go well beyond incentives.
“We looked at 12 different sites that had the infrastructure and had the workforce across many, many different states in the country, and North Carolina rose to the top,” she said.
“You have the infrastructure. You have a great supplier ecosystem. You have the schools that we desperately need to be part of our process,” Magargee said. “And on top of all that, you have a government that believes in creating the conditions and the environment for us to make investments of this magnitude.
“Whether it was from the town or the county or the state, you showed up together; you showed up in a way that was dedicated to innovation and to creating jobs. And you have shown us a sense of urgency and responsiveness like no other.”
The Genentech site is in southwest Wake County, just off the U.S. 1 corridor. It’s part of what Holly Springs officials call “Camp Helix,” an industrial park for the life sciences and advanced manufacturing.
Another leading drugmaker, Amgen, is setting up across the street and in January cut the ribbon on the first phase of its new factory.
“Companies like Genentech, they’re critical and important to the growth of many of the small businesses here in Holly Springs,” Mayor Sean Mayefskie said. “The economic ripple effect of the investment by Genentech in Holly Springs cannot be overstated.”
