On April 30, 2026, Novartis announced plans for a new 56,200-square-foot active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturing facility in Morrisville, North Carolina. The plant will produce APIs for solid dosage tablets, capsules, and RNA therapeutics, marking the seventh new facility within one year of its 23 billion US dollar investment commitment.
CEO Vas Narasimhan stated: By building a connected end-to-end footprint, we are strengthening our ability to locally develop, produce, and deliver medicines at scale. This is the first time Novartis will achieve end-to-end US manufacturing across all advanced technology platforms.
The Morrisville API plant completes a 700,000-plus square-foot flagship hub in North Carolina with five facilities across three sites. The campus includes biologics manufacturing and sterile packaging in Durham, sterile biologics filling into syringes and vials, and solid dosage plus API production in Morrisville. The hub supports therapies across oncology, immunology, neuroscience, cardiovascular, renal, and metabolic disease. The API facility opens in 2028 and will support RNA-based therapeutics alongside traditional small-molecule APIs.
Novartis has executed rapidly: a San Diego biomedical research center and RLT facility in Denton, Texas (February 2026), an RLT facility in Winter Park, Florida (January 2026), NC hub groundbreaking (December 2025), and an RLT facility in Carlsbad, California (November 2025). The company is on track to manufacture all key US medicines domestically.
Reshoring Redeploys Supply Chains. Contract API suppliers may need US-based operations as Novartis builds domestic capacity. New facilities will initially rely on external suppliers for KSMs and advanced intermediates.
RNA Therapeutics Demand Accelerates. The RNA therapeutics market is projected to exceed 25 billion dollars by 2030. Suppliers of nucleotide building blocks and lipid nanoparticle components should prepare.
CDMO Competition Intensifies. With multiple mega-projects underway, CDMOs with US-based FDA-inspected capacity face a unique window. Cambrex 120 million dollar Iowa expansion partly responds to this trend.
Tariffs Reinforce Onshoring. Section 232 investigations and 100 percent duties on patented drugs make domestic production increasingly attractive.
Novartis 23 billion dollar US commitment represents a landmark pharmaceutical reshoring initiative. API suppliers who position for this new reality will thrive as the industry restructures around resilience.
