Emmanuel Macron will unveil this Thursday in Chartres (Eure-et-Loire) an investment of more than two billion euros from Danish Novo Nordisk in the production of drugs for diabetes and obesity, thus adding a new aspect to reindustrialization from the country.
The Head of State, determined to pose as a “reformer” and to refine his record by the end of the five-year term in 2027 when he will not be able to run again, thus continues his offensive on the terrain he knows best , that of the economy.
“More than 500 new jobs”
After the launch of an ambitious plan around electric batteries in May in Dunkirk – 6.7 billion euros in foreign investments – place on health, with an investment of 2.1 billion euros higher than that announced by Pfizer (1.5 billion) in May, notes the Elysée.
Emmanuel Macron, accompanied by Ministers of Health Aurélien Rousseau and Ministers of Industry Roland Lescure, is expected at 4 p.m. at the Novo Nordisk site in Chartres to seal the announcement. In June, he also presented a plan to relocalize the production of medicines in order to deal with structural shortages – precipitated by the Covid crisis – of antibiotics and paracetamol.
The Novo Norisk laboratory will double the surface area of its Chartres factory to 230,000 m2 and create “more than 500 new jobs”, which will be added to the 1,600 already existing. The project should be finalized in 2028, specifies the company. It will thus extend the production of the site, currently specialized in insulin cartridges and vials, to treatments acting on obesity, in high global demand.
The “battle for foreign trade”
Obesity represents a societal challenge and a major opportunity for the most advanced pharmaceutical players in this field. “It’s not just about eating too much and not moving enough. Over time, it becomes a real chronic illness with resistance to weight loss,” explains Karine Clément, professor of nutrition at the Parisian Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital to AFP.
Novo Nordisk has become the largest European market capitalization ahead of luxury giant LVMH since September, thanks to the success of its derivative products used against this difficult-to-treat disease.
In 2023 alone, the group says it has invested ten billion euros across its entire production base, including the “strategic” factory in Chartres, whose treatments are taken by more than ten million diabetics around the world. each day. In doing so, it will also contribute to France’s “battle of foreign trade” because 90 to 95% of its production is exported, underlines the Elysée. France has not had a trade surplus for the exchange of goods since 2002 and the deficit stood at 54 billion euros in the first half of 2023.
Novo Nordisk’s precursor drug for obesity (“Wegovy”) is marketed in the United States, Denmark, Norway, the United Kingdom and recently in Switzerland. The laboratory plans to apply for certification in France in 2024.
Brake for investors
Emmanuel Macron, who maintains his contacts with the CEOs of large international companies, thus achieves a new victory in the battle for “attractiveness” on the European stage.
The American pharmaceutical group Eli Lilly has just announced an investment of 2.3 billion euros in Germany to expand its production of diabetes drugs. But the road remains long and winding in a turbulent international context and a national environment which also has its constraints.
“It is not by making a new investment a media event that it changes the situation,” says Fréderic Bizard, specialist in health issues and professor of economics affiliated with ESCP Europe, interviewed by AFP.
The main obstacle to foreign investments in France remains the “administrative and regulatory ecosystem” of the pharmaceutical industry, according to him. For Patrick Biecheler, partner at the consulting firm Bain and Company, these treatments could nevertheless be extended to other diseases such as fatty liver and Alzheimer’s and therefore offer multiple “growth prospects”.