By Zac Ezzone for the Triangle Business Journal

Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) has kicked off construction on a $2 billion biologics manufacturing facility in Eastern North Carolina. The 500,000-square-foot facility in Wilson will employ more than 500 people once it is fully operational.

Johnson & Johnson, based in New Jersey, is preparing the Wilson site to begin steel work for the facility. Construction will be complete in 2028, after which the company will begin qualifying equipment and validating the manufacturing processes at the site to begin producing medicines.

The plant will be under the company’s Janssen Biotech subsidiary.

Including construction and operations of the facility, the project is expected to create more than 5,000 jobs. Once the facility is operational, Johnson & Johnson will have more than 500 employees and contractors at the site, with more than 80 employees already hired.

The company told the state that jobs at the plant will pay a minimum average wage of just shy of $109,000.

The company is investing in this facility to support its pipeline of innovative medicines, said Dapo Ajayi, vice president of supply chain at Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine. This includes medicines targeting cancer, immune-mediated diseases and neurological conditions.

“This facility is about expanding our capacity to be able to support this really exciting portfolio of products that are coming through from Johnson & Johnson,” Ajayi said.

Building out the Wilson facility is part of the company’s plans to invest more than $55 billion in the U.S. over the next four years.

In addition to its North Carolina investment, Johnson & Johnson plans to build three other manufacturing facilities and expand several existing sites across the company’s Innovative Medicine and Medtech businesses. The company is also investing in its research and development infrastructure, with a focus on areas like oncology, neuroscience, immunology, cardiovascular disease and robotic surgery.

“What’s driving this investment is the growth in terms of our portfolio and the just the number of transformational medicines that we got coming through our pipeline,” Ajayi said.

The company unveiled its plans in Wilson in October, securing potential local and state incentives. In December, the company purchased more than 176 acres in the Wilson Corporate Park for the facility. The land sits off Corporate Parkway West, Merck Road West and International Boulevard.

To further develop a local workforce, Johnson & Johnson is collaborating with the Smithsonian Science Education Center and Wilson County Schools to bring more STEM programming to local schools.

Additionally, the company is working with the North Carolina Biotechnology Center and Wilson Community College to bring the BioWork certificate program to Wilson County high schools. This is a program at North Carolina community colleges that prepares students for entry-level positions in manufacturing in the biopharmaceutical industry.

“North Carolina is renowned in terms of the skilled workforce that it has, but also the investment that North Carolina has made in terms of infrastructure and workforce development means that it deserves this type of investment,” Ajayi said.

The preceding article originally appeared on March 21, 2025 at the Triangle Business Journal’s website and is made available here for educational purposes only. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 106A-117 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Any views or opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Carolina Leadership Coalition. Above: digital rendering of Johnson & Johnson’s manufacturing facility in Wilson.