Eli Lilly plans 460 jobs in Durham after $12 million incentives deal
Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly & Co. plans to add 462 new jobs in Durham County by 2027 in exchange for $12.4 million in incentives from local and state governments.
The jobs, which will be in manufacturing, assembly and packaging, will pay a minimum average wage of $71,756 per year, according to the N.C. Department of Commerce, which approved the incentives in a meeting in Raleigh on Tuesday morning. The average wage in Durham County is $65,152.
The company will receive a Job Development Investment Grant worth up to $8.7 million from North Carolina, if it meets its hiring and investment goals. The state’s community college system is also putting up to $1.2 million in training support into the deal, and Durham County has pledged $2.55 million in local incentives.
Durham County was competing with Indianapolis, where Eli Lilly is headquartered, and Philadelphia for the positions — though the Commerce Department did not state whether those locations were offering incentives.
The facility in Research Triangle Park — where Eli Lilly will invest $474 million by 2025 — will include the manufacturing of Trulicity and Tirzepatide, two drugs that treat Type 2 Diabetes, according to Commerce.
Eli Lilly will put its facility on the Parmer RTP campus in Research Triangle Park, a spokeswoman for the company said. The Parmer campus was once home to a sprawling collection of GlaxoSmithKline offices — but GSK sold its holdings there and only leases a few buildings now.
Most hiring will be in 2023
Eli Lilly won’t begin hiring significant numbers of employees until 2023, though the company will hire around a dozen employees this year to oversee the start of the project. The company currently has around 135 remote workers in North Carolina that work in sales.
It’s a return of sorts to RTP for Eli Lilly. The company had operations in the park from 1994 to 2004, when it shut down a lab that employed 142 people during a restructuring of the company, The News & Observer reported at the time. At that time, Eli Lilly owned property near Cornwallis Road and T.W. Alexander Drive, which it acquired when it bought Sphinx Pharmaceuticals.
Founded in 1901, Eli Lilly employs around 33,000 people across the world, with more than 7,700 employees specifically working in research and development. The company says it spends around $5.3 billion in R&D expenditures annually.
Pharmaceutical jobs in Durham
Durham County has seen a spate of pharmaceutical manufacturing jobs in recent years thanks to incentives from the state.
Last year, Merck said it would add around 400 manufacturing jobs in Durham in exchange for $12.5 million in incentives, The News & Observer reported. Another company, AveXis, plans to bring manufacturing jobs to Durham after receiving multiple incentives.
Corning, which makes materials used in pharmaceutical manufacturing, said in 2018 it would create more than 300 jobs in Durham after receiving an incentive package, The Herald-Sun reported.
This story was produced with financial support from a coalition of partners led by Innovate Raleigh as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. Learn more; go to bit.ly/newsinnovate
This story was originally published January 21, 2020 at 11:24 AM with the headline "Eli Lilly plans 460 jobs in Durham after $12 million incentives deal."
