{"id":294176,"date":"2026-02-12T12:29:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T12:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/294176\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T12:29:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T12:29:07","slug":"novo-nordisk-set-to-make-wegovy-pill-in-ireland-for-markets-outside-us-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/294176\/","title":{"rendered":"Novo Nordisk set to make Wegovy pill in Ireland for markets outside US \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wight loss drug company Novo Nordisk<\/a> will expand its facility in Athlone, chief executive Mike Doustdar says.<\/p>\n

The launch of the Wegovy <\/a>in pill form in early January has been one of the most successful pharmaceutical debuts ever, with more than 240,000 Americans taking it already, Doustdar said.<\/p>\n

Novo is hoping the pill will form a big part of its fight to reclaim share in a weight-loss market it once dominated and make up ground lost to rival Eli Lilly<\/a>, which makes the blockbuster drug Zepbound<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Athlone investment will see the company manufacture the pill form of their weight loss drug in Ireland for markets outside the United States. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf we were about to throw in the towel, we would not be investing in factories in Ireland,\u201d Doustdar said.<\/p>\n

Around two years ago, the Danish drugmaker pulled out of plans to build a factory near Dublin and it cut jobs at the Athlone site in September last year, according to media reports.<\/p>\n

Doustdar declined to comment on the scale of the investment.<\/p>\n

Ireland is an international hub for pharmaceutical manufacturing. Lilly produces active ingredients for its blockbuster weight-loss and diabetes drugs there. <\/p>\n

The State\u2019s economy is highly dependent on US investment and it has found itself at the centre of President Donald Trump\u2019s threats to reshore profits and impose tariffs.<\/p>\n

Novo disappointed investors by forecasting a bigger-than-expected drop in sales this year, evidence of an intensifying price war in obesity drugs. Novo makes the obesity pill for the US market in the US. \u2013 Bloomberg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wight loss drug company Novo Nordisk will expand its facility in Athlone, chief executive Mike Doustdar says. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12250,61,60,43,10416,14955,19966],"class_list":{"0":"post-294176","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-eli-lilly","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-novo-nordisk","13":"tag-wegovy","14":"tag-zepbound"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}