With a $3 billion investment, Eli Lilly and Co. will expand its manufacturing operations at a facility purchased earlier this year in Pleasant Prairie, Wis. Construction on a new manufacturing building is expected to begin next year.
This is the company’s single largest U.S. manufacturing investment outside of its home state of Indiana, according to prepared remarks by Edgardo Hernandez, executive vice president & president of Lilly Manufacturing Operations. Lilly’s latest Indiana investment clocked in at $5.3 billion in May.
The Pleasant Prairie facility
Lilly acquired the Pleasant Prairie plant in April from Nexus Pharmaceuticals. However, the facility is yet to be fully operational and Lilly expects production to start by the end of 2025.
The property is inside the 440-acre Prairie Highlands Corporate Park, which is located along a stretch of Interstate 94 running about 40 miles south of Milwaukee. Notable tenants at the park include Advocate Aurora Health Care and HARIBO of America.
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Upon completion, the expanded facility will use advanced automation—incorporating guided vehicles and robotics—to enhance the company’s medicine production. The plant will produce injectable medicines and assemble and package products across various therapeutic areas and allow Lilly to grow its existing and future medicine pipeline in the Midwest.
As of December, the company’s footprint at the Pleasant Prairie site totaled 696,960 square feet, according to Kenosha News.
Lilly’s manufacturing expansion
The firm has gradually expanded in Kenosha County since the beginning of the year. In November, Lilly paid $40.8 million for a 323,930-square-foot warehouse in the nearby Bristol, Wis., and another $10.2 million for 30.9 acres surrounding that property, according to BizTimes. This brought the company’s total planned investment across Wisconsin to $4 billion.
At a global scale, Lilly has deployed upward of $23 billion for the construction and expansion, as well as the acquisition, of manufacturing sites since 2020. The company’s medication aims to combat diabetes, obesity and cancer, among others.
Chicago industrial investment soars
Greater Chicago’s industrial investment volume totaled more than $2.6 billion during the first 10 months of the year, according to a CommercialEdge report. For the first three quarters, the metro’s industrial sales were $678.2 million higher than the figure registered during the same period of last year.
However, Chicagoland was not one of the top 3 Midwest markets for industrial pipeline size, the same source shows. The metro had only about 6.9 million square feet under construction as of October, behind Kansas City (11.7 million square feet), Columbus, Ohio (8.1 million square feet) and Detroit (7.7 million square feet).
One of the largest projects underway in the market is Plainfield Business Center, developed in phases by Trammell Crow Co. At full build-out, the industrial campus will comprise 8 million square feet.