The "miracle weight-loss drug" is in high demand! Eli Lilly has reached an agreement with outsourcing contractors to expand production capacity.

At the end of last year, Eli Lilly's weight loss drug Zepbound was approved, officially competing with Novo Nordisk AS. Due to short-term production capacity bottlenecks, Eli Lilly is accelerating production by using contract manufacturers.

According to media reports on Tuesday, Eli Lilly has reached an agreement with the American resilience company National Resilience and the Italian pharmaceutical company BSP Pharmaceuticals on the formulation and filling of injection pens.

GLP-1 class weight loss drugs, including Wegovy and Zepbound, are in high demand with insufficient production capacity. Eli Lilly is preparing to outsource the filling process to pharmaceutical manufacturers. The filling process involves preparing the drug solution in the factory, filtering it into the syringe, and then sealing and packaging it.

According to the research company Global Data's forecast, with these two drugs administered weekly, global sales are expected to reach $18.2 billion this year.

Short-term production capacity bottlenecks benefit contract manufacturers

Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk AS have invested billions of dollars to expand internal production facilities to address two major production bottlenecks: the production of active ingredients and filling.

Experts say that the production of semaglutide (active ingredient in Wegovy) and tirzepatide (active ingredient in Zepbound) both involve complex fermentation processes, but Eli Lilly's drug is more difficult to manufacture because it contains two non-natural amino acids.

Moreover, since new production facilities typically take several years to come online, companies heavily rely on contract manufacturers. According to contract manufacturer Catalent's data, the global contract development and manufacturing market supporting pharmaceutical companies in product manufacturing and clinical trials is expected to grow from $72 billion to $90 billion in the next two years.

An analyst from Evercore pointed out that more than half of the GLP-1 class drugs are in auto-injection pens produced by an unnamed contract manufacturer.

Internal estimates from a contract manufacturer show that American companies Thermo Fisher, Catalent, and Simtra, as well as German company Vetter, control more than half of the injection filling outsourcing market.

Last month, Novo Nordisk AS acquired three "filling-processing" factories from Catalent for $11 billion to produce Wegovy and its diabetes treatment drug Ozempic, reflecting the urgent need to increase filling capacity.

However, these factories will not increase Novo Nordisk AS's production until 2026. Before the acquisition last month, Novo Nordisk AS CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen revealed: The demand for weight loss drugs is expected to exceed our production capacity, and the demand may continue to grow further.