Lilly breaks ground on a $5B Virginia bioconjugate plant and expects its first building to open in 2030

Eli Lilly broke ground on Oct. 22 on a $5 billion plant in Goochland County, just west of Richmond, Virginia. Pharma Manufacturing, which covered the ceremony, reported that the site will carry dedicated ingredient capacity for bioconjugates and large-molecule drugs, and that Lilly is aiming for LEED Gold certification.

Katherine Schulte reported for Virginia Business that Lilly expects to open the first building in 2030 and a second in 2031.

The most useful details are in what happens before the first production building opens. Anyone planning for new ADC supply, hiring in the Richmond region or benchmarking a greenfield biologics build will learn more from the order in which Goochland's pieces come online than from the $5 billion price tag.

Active ingredient and finished dose on one campus

An ADC pairs a monoclonal antibody, designed to attach to diseased cells, with a cytotoxic drug that does the damage once it arrives. In its September 2025 announcement, Lilly described ADCs as designed to deliver potent medicines directly to diseased cells, maximizing treatment effectiveness while reducing harm to healthy tissue. ADCs are used mainly in cancer and are being studied for autoimmune and other conditions. The Goochland site will produce active pharmaceutical ingredients and finished medicines in one integrated facility, according to Pharma Manufacturing.

Lilly called it the company's first dedicated, fully integrated API and drug product facility for its bioconjugate platform and monoclonal antibody portfolio. Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News and Pharmaceutical Processing World both carried that description at the time of the announcement. Edgardo Hernandez, executive vice president and president of Lilly Manufacturing Operations, said the site represents a significant milestone "as we begin building our first bioconjugate facility." Lilly already has manufacturing facilities in nine countries. For a company of that reach, a plant designed around one type of drug suggests how much weight Lilly is putting on bioconjugates.

The plant will also depend heavily on software. At Goochland, Lilly intends to apply AI, machine learning, advanced data analytics and digitally integrated systems, and to build automation into its manufacturing operations. When Pharma Manufacturing covered the Houston groundbreaking in September, it described a very similar plan for that site: AI and machine learning, data analytics and digitally connected systems, with automation running through every stage of production. Because the descriptions line up so closely, Lilly may be using one shared digital approach across its new builds.

The training center opens first

Lilly has put $40 million toward the Virginia Center for Advanced Pharmaceutical Manufacturing. This statewide network builds the workforce by bringing together partners from industry, government and higher education. Its plans call for a pilot-scale training center in Goochland County, which is expected to open in 2028.

Lilly plans to open the pilot-scale training center in 2028. Its first Goochland building is expected in 2030, two years later, which suggests the workforce is the first part of this plant that has to be ready. Pharma Manufacturing reported that Lilly anticipates roughly 1,800 construction jobs from the capital project, plus 650 permanent jobs. Those permanent roles will include engineers, scientists, laboratory technicians and operations personnel.

Houston makes a useful comparison. According to Pharma Manufacturing, Lilly's $12.5 million for San Jacinto College will pay for training pathways, equipment and facilities aimed at advanced chemical synthesis careers for technicians, operators and maintenance staff. The Virginia money works differently. Lilly's $40 million backs the Virginia Center for Advanced Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, which operates across the state and develops workers with partners from industry, government and higher education. That could mean its graduates end up working well beyond Lilly.

That matters because Lilly isn't the only big drugmaker building in Virginia. When Lilly first announced the plant, GEN reported that it was the second pharma giant in recent months to announce plans for a multi-billion-dollar manufacturing plant in Virginia. The first was AstraZeneca, which revealed plans for what the company said will be its largest-ever manufacturing facility, at a site later revealed to be within Albemarle County, near Charlottesville. For plant HR leads and site managers across the region, the 2028 center could become a shared source of trained operators and technicians, not one that belongs to a single employer.

A bigger plan than the incentive filing

GEN reported that Lilly is eligible for a special appropriation of up to $130 million, approved by the state's Major Employment and Investment Project Approval Commission and subject to General Assembly approval. That package was based on Lilly's original plan for the site: more than $2.148 billion in investment and 468 jobs. Lilly's own 2025 release said its final investment and job numbers went beyond that submission.

Lilly has also estimated that each dollar invested in the site will generate up to four dollars of local economic activity. That is the company's projection. Nobody has measured it yet.

GEN reported that Goochland was picked from several hundred applications. The criteria included workforce potential in Greater Richmond, ready access to utilities and transportation, favorable zoning and economic incentives. The $40 million training commitment suggests Lilly sees the local talent pool as something to invest in as well as something to evaluate.

Goochland's place in Lilly's ten-site build

Since 2020, Lilly has announced 10 U.S. manufacturing sites, and Pharma Manufacturing reported that the Goochland project is one of them. Together they fall under more than $50 billion in planned domestic investments. When the plans were announced in 2025, they covered four new U.S. sites, according to Pharmaceutical Processing World. Three were meant to make APIs and bring critical small molecule chemical synthesis capabilities back to the U.S. The fourth was meant to expand Lilly's global parenteral manufacturing network for future injectable therapies. Virginia was the first of the four to be named. Chair and CEO David Ricks said adding domestic capacity would give Lilly a more secure and resilient supply chain.

Foundayo (orforglipron), Lilly's synthetic oral GLP-1 medicine, will be made at the company's Houston site, as will other small-molecule medicines. According to Lilly, the Texas plant is also slated to produce oligonucleotides and other advanced therapeutics. Taken together, the two sites suggest Lilly could be splitting new capacity by type of drug, with chemical synthesis in Texas and bioconjugates in Virginia.

For anyone watching near-term supply, Goochland is a later story. Its first building is a 2030 event. In July, Lilly announced a $750 million expansion of its manufacturing partnership with Resilience in Ohio. Under that deal, Resilience's Cincinnati-area operations will take on production of the injectable device for Lilly's diabetes and obesity medicines.

In Goochland, the next dated milestone is 2028, when the pilot-scale training center is due to open. It could offer an early sign of whether the Richmond region can have people trained and ready by the time the facility is expected to begin production in 2030.