AbbVie Breaks Ground On New API Manufacturing Facility In North Chicago; Expands Manufacturing With $195M API Plant Investment

AbbVie has officially begun construction of a new active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturing plant at its North Chicago, Illinois campus. The facility represents a major milestone in AbbVie’s strategy to strengthen its U.S. manufacturing footprint and enhance domestic production capabilities for critical medicines.

"Today's groundbreaking is an important milestone in AbbVie's ongoing campaign to accelerate biopharmaceutical innovation and manufacturing capabilities in the U.S.," said Azita Saleki-Gerhardt, Ph.D., executive vice president and chief operations officer, AbbVie. "Over the next decade, AbbVie plans to invest more than $10 billion in capital to add multiple new U.S. manufacturing plants and improve the lives of millions of patients in the U.S. and worldwide who depend on our medicines."

API manufacturing is a complex, multistep process that produces the core active components that drive a drug’s therapeutic effects. Once operational, the new North Chicago facility will expand AbbVie’s chemical synthesis capacity and allow the company to shift production of select APIs from Europe and Asia to the U.S. This move is expected to support the development and supply of current and next-generation treatments across AbbVie’s neuroscience, immunology, and oncology portfolios.

The $195 million investment will also create new jobs and bolster AbbVie’s existing U.S. operations, which already support more than 6,000 jobs across 11 manufacturing sites. With over 28,000 employees nationwide and more than 11,000 based in Illinois, AbbVie continues to reinforce its long-term commitment to its home state while advancing the development and manufacturing of innovative therapies for patients worldwide.