Pharma manufacturing in the United States is experiencing an unprecedented construction boom, driven by massive onshoring efforts from the industry’s largest companies. The trend, which intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, continues to accelerate as firms lock in multi-billion-dollar commitments to domestic production, R&D expansion, and advanced facility development.
“I’ve been in this industry for 35 years [and] I’ve never seen it as hot as it is right now,” said Michael Marston, life sciences core market co-leader at DPR Construction. His firm works with major global players including Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis and Roche.
According to a new DPR report, pharma companies plan to invest more than $370 billion in U.S. manufacturing over the next five years — a scale of spending that Marston describes as far larger than anything seen in previous development cycles.
In just the latter half of 2025, several major investments were announced:
According to Marston, much of the urgency stems from vulnerabilities exposed during the pandemic. The global supply chain, he said, was “exposed,” prompting Big Pharma to secure U.S.-based production capacity. That momentum is now compounded by the Trump administration’s tariff threats aimed at companies that do not expand manufacturing in the U.S.
Despite higher borrowing costs, increased material expenses, and cuts to NIH funding, Marston notes that project commitments remain robust. “Most of the project expenditures are coming from companies that have internal funding,” he said. “Those who have money, which tends to be Big Pharma, are absolutely spending it right now and driving a lot of what we’re seeing in the industry.”
Much of the development is clustered along the East Coast, particularly around the Raleigh-Durham region. Long known as a research and biotech hub, the area is actively recruiting new facilities through workforce advantages and lower operational costs.
“Last year alone we had announcements of manufacturers either setting up their operations or expanding operations here, in the amount of a little over $10 billion of announced projects and about 4,500 jobs,” said Doug Edgeton, president and CEO of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.
But concentration creates challenges. Marston warns that heavy geographic clustering is “stressing the contractor and subcontractor partners that are actually able to execute this,” often requiring developers to source labor and specialty contractors from outside the region.
The first question pharma clients ask is no longer about cost — it’s about power availability. The combination of advanced manufacturing loads, cleanroom systems, and the rise of AI-driven drug discovery has pushed electrical demand to new levels.
Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks recently highlighted the challenge as the company collaborates with Nvidia on what he called the “most powerful supercomputer owned and operated by a pharmaceutical company,” which will serve as an “AI factory.”
“There’s no version of the next five years where we don’t need a lot more power … and if we want to grow our industrial base, that’s what’s required,” Ricks said.
Pharma developers are now competing not only with each other but also with hyperscale data centers and supercomputing facilities for limited power supplies.
Although the FDA has undergone “a lot of shake-ups,” Marston noted that regulatory approvals for new construction and validation processes have not been significantly affected.
Cuts to NIH funding also appear to have had little impact on the pace of private-sector construction. Companies with strong balance sheets continue to fund expansions directly, bypassing some of the pressures affecting smaller biotech firms.
“There have been a lot of shake-ups in the FDA recently, but we haven’t seen an impact yet to how our projects are actually going through that regulatory phase,” Marston said.
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The surge in U.S. construction is driven almost entirely by Big Pharma. Marston said he has seen no meaningful interest from generics manufacturers in reshoring production to the United States.
Most generics will continue to be made in India, China, and other low-cost regions — a trend reinforced by recent federal policy. The Trump administration’s announcement that generics will be exempt from upcoming pharma tariffs removes any immediate incentive to move production stateside.
Marston emphasized that while DPR accounts for “a small portion of the total market,” the generics sector shows little signal of shifting its global manufacturing model.
The unprecedented scale of construction reflects a strategic shift in how the U.S. pharmaceutical industry views supply chain resilience, research competitiveness, and long-term domestic capacity. But as investment accelerates, developers must navigate regional labor shortages, power constraints, regulatory demands, and global market dynamics that favor large, well-funded companies.
With hundreds of billions already committed and groundbreaking ceremonies happening nationwide, the manufacturing boom shows no sign of slowing — and will shape the sector’s geographic and economic footprint for decades.
Originally reported by Alexandra Pecci in Pharma Voice.
