Novo Holdings plans to purchase Bloomington-based pharmaceutical manufacturer Catalent

Bloomington, Indiana – Novo Holdings, a Danish business, will pay $16.5 billion to acquire Bloomington’s Catalent facility, according to a Monday announcement. Catalent is a pharmaceutical business that creates novel drugs and technologies for patients worldwide.

Investment firm Novo Holdings oversees the assets of Novo Nordisk, a Danish pharmaceutical business that makes medications like Wegovy and Ozempic.

Novo had an annual profit for 2023 of 83.7 billion Danish kroner, or roughly 11.9 billion USD, according to the Washington Post. This is the company’s greatest profit in decades. According to a business news statement, sales of weight loss and diabetic medications have increased 38% in Danish kroner, or roughly 31.1 billion USD, which is probably the cause of this.

Originally prescribed to treat Type 2 diabetes, Ozempic and Wegovy gained widespread recognition for their appetite-suppressant properties as well as their unfavorable side effects. The Food and Drug Administration authorized Wegovy in 2021 for the chronic management of weight.

Novo Nordisk intends to increase Wegovy supply in the US. The acquisition is probably the result of their desire to grow to accommodate more patients access to the semaglutide medication, which imitates the hormone released in a portion of the digestive tract after eating.

With the purchase, Catalent will become a privately held company instead of a publicly traded company. Until they laid off employees later that year, the Catalent facility, which was located at 1300 S. Patterson Dr., employed 4,000 people and was the second-largest employer in Bloomington as of 2022. How the ownership shift will affect the local business and its staff is still unknown.

It is anticipated that the merger will be completed by the end of 2024.