INDIANAPOLIS — Roche, a Swiss biotechnology company whose U.S. headquarters is in Indianapolis, has announced its intention to invest $50 billion in the United States over the next five years.
The investment will include new and expanded life sciences facilities across the country, as well as a new 900,000-square-foot manufacturing facility, the location of which will be announced soon. This project will be a manufacturing facility for Roche’s portfolio of next-generation weight loss medicines.
The other new developments will include a gene therapy manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania, a new plant in Indiana for continuous glucose monitoring and a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Massachusetts.
Roche will also expand and upgrade its existing pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities in Kentucky, Indiana, New Jersey, Oregon and Pennsylvania as part of the investment, as well as expand R&D centers in Arizona, California and Indiana.
Roche’s investment is expected to create more than 12,000 new jobs, including nearly 6,500 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs at the new and expanded facilities. The construction timeline for these projects was not announced.
Once Roche’s new and expanded facilities come on line, the firm says it will be able to export more medicines from the United States than it imports. Today, Roche says that its diagnostics division already has an export surplus from the United States to other countries.
“Today’s announced investments underscore our long-standing commitment to research, development and manufacturing in the United States,” says Thomas Schinecker, CEO of Roche. He adds that Roche has had a U.S. presence for 110 years.
Founded in 1896 in Basel, Switzerland, Roche was one of the first industrial manufacturers of branded medicines and today is a leader in biotech and in-vitro diagnostics. The company owns Genentech and Chugai Pharmaceutical and staffs more than 25,000 people in the United States. Roche’s existing properties include 13 manufacturing facilities and 15 R&D sites across eight states.
— John Nelson