Fluor to build US diabetes medicine plant

FLUOR has won a US$1.2bn engineering, procurement, construction and construction management contract by Novo Nordisk for a diabetes active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturing facility in North Carolina, US.

The contractor has provided basic design services since Novo Nordisk announced in August 2015 that it would build a new US$2bn facility in Clayton, and will now carry out the full scope of the work.

The Clayton site currently fills and packages diabetes medicines and makes delivery devices, including needle pens. The new facility will produce APIs for existing and future medicines, marking the company’s first location outside of Denmark to produce the medicine itself. The company chose the US for its new production site as the country is “by far” the largest market for the company’s diabetes medicines.

“Novo Nordisk selected Fluor for this critical project, the largest in our history, based on their strong safety culture, technical competence in the life sciences industry and ability to deliver the full scope of work,” said Morten Nielsen, senior vice president at Novo Nordisk.

Once fully operational in 2020, the site will ensure production capacity for diabetes treatments for the decade ahead, the company said in a statement when ground was broken on the new facility in March.

The project is expected to support 2,500 jobs during construction and 700 jobs in production and engineering once operational – with construction scheduled for completion in mid-2019.