Pharma giant Amgen opens first Holly Springs facility, starts construction on second
Three years after beginning construction in southwestern Wake County, the pharmaceutical company Amgen celebrated the completion of its $550 million manufacturing plant in the town of Holly Springs during a site event Friday. Then, minutes later, the California drugmaker ceremonially broke ground on a second Holly Springs facility, which is poised to cost nearly twice as much to erect.
“Very unique to me, in my career, is to be able to have a ribbon-cutting and a groundbreaking in the exact same ceremony,” Paul Lewus, vice president of site operations at Amgen North Carolina, told The News & Observer.
Between the two plants, Amgen is committed to investing $1.5 billion and creating at least 720 local jobs within the next seven years. The company says it already employs around 250 workers at the site, a combination of local hires and relocated staff from other Amgen facilities. To recruit Triangle workers, Amgen has partnered with Wake Technical Community College to run an 18-month apprenticeship program.
Amgen was founded in 1980 and today employs more than 27,000 workers globally. It markets 36 medications on its website, including treatments for kidney disease, blood conditions and immune disorders. With a current market capitalization of around $150 billion, it is among the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies.
Its Holly Springs facilities will produce drug substances, the active ingredients that go into Amgen’s lineup of general medicine, inflammation, oncology and rare disease treatments. The company adds to Holly Spring’s status as an emerging biotech hub, with the fast-growing town of 46,000 also supporting the drug manufacturer CSL Seqirus and an incoming FujiFilm Diosynth plant (also slated to open this year).
“Work done here in North Carolina will have an impact far beyond the borders of our state,” North Carolina Senate leader Phil Berger said during the ribbon-cutting ceremony. “Medicines manufactured here in Holly Springs will help families worldwide. Think about that for a second.”
In 2021, Amgen received state and local incentives to establish its drug substance plant in Wake County. It broke ground on this facility in March 2022. The project promised at least 350 jobs at an average salary of $119,510, a figure buoyed in part by the hiring of leadership positions.
Though construction is finished, Lewus said this facility won’t be operational until later this year, as the company sets up equipment.
This December, Amgen received a state incentive to expand its Holly Springs operations by adding another drug substance facility. Under this agreement, Amgen will create 370 jobs between 2028 and 2032 at an average salary of $91,527. The cost of completing this next factory is expected to be close to $1 billion.
“Building new manufacturing facilities is a long game,” Lewus said.
The long game is also what Holly Springs has been playing.
“What happened almost 20 years ago, the town council and Mayor Dick Sears at the time said we want to become a life science, bioscience hub. How do we get there?” town council member Tim Forrest told The N&O in December. “So they started gearing infrastructure changes to the land development, water, sewer, all that for pending growth but also for how to recruit major businesses.”
This story was originally published January 24, 2025 at 10:03 AM.
