Dive Brief:
- Biopharmaceutical manufacturer GSK will invest more than $800 million to expand its operations in Upper Merion Township, Pennsylvania, Gov. Josh Shapiro and the state’s economic development agency announced last week.
- London-based GSK plans to establish a biopharmaceutical and manufacturing hub with its latest investment, housing production, research and development and advanced digital capabilities at a single site. The expansion is expected to create more than 300 jobs over the next five years.
- As part of the project, GSK said it will demolish existing buildings to make way for “new and enhanced facilities,” including a quality control lab and pilot plant for technology and process development. Construction is scheduled to begin next year.
Dive Insight:
This is GSK’s second Pennsylvania investment in the past two years. The company pledged $800 million to increase its manufacturing and R&D footprint in Lancaster County in October 2024. That investment created 200 jobs and was considered to be the company’s largest U.S. manufacturing investment at the time.
“Investing in additional commercial and R&D manufacturing with advanced digital capabilities at our Upper Merion site will help accelerate the development and supply of future medicines for patients,” Regis Simard, GSK’s global supply chain president, said in a statement.
In addition to creating jobs, GSK’s latest expansion will retain 4,500 existing jobs, according to a news release. The company plans to build a commercial-scale biologics manufacturing facility for clinical and commercial supplies as part of the project.
The state said GSK’s expansion will be eligible for tax benefits through the Qualified Manufacturing Innovation and Reinvestment Deduction program and the Manufacturing Tax Credit program. No specific numbers were disclosed.
GSK, an abbreviation for its former full name GlaxoSmithKline, was established in 2000 through the merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham, which have origins dating back to the 1700s.
The company develops medicines and vaccines, supplying treatments for HIV, malaria, women’s cancers and other focus areas, according to its website. It rebranded to GSK a few months before spinning off its consumer healthcare business as independent public company Haleon in 2022. More recently, GSK has turned its focus to U.S. expansion.
The company, which has U.S. headquarters in Philadelphia, last year committed to spending $30 billion expanding its supply chain infrastructure and R&D across the United States through 2030.
Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson and other competitors have also invested in Pennsylvania as part of multibillion-dollar U.S. expansion plans. The Trump administration has sought to spur supply chain and production reshoring through a mix of tariffs and tax breaks.
