It didn’t look like a construction boom on paper. Interest rates stayed stubbornly high, borrowing costs gnawed at hurdle rates, and trade policy turned into a moving target. Yet across the U.S., biopharma didn’t stall—it re-sequenced. Projects got smaller, smarter, and harder to kill. Brownfields were reimagined; greenfields came with digital-first URSs and commissioning plans that actually acknowledged the workforce on Day One.
Into this moment—noisy, consequential, and capital-intensive—CRB will release its Horizons: Life Sciences 2025 report this fall, a ground-truth readout from roughly 400 R&D and manufacturing leaders on what gets built next, and why. For context, last year’s edition canvassed 500 leaders and effectively “lifted the roof” on the modern facility—documenting a decisive shift toward automation, continuous processing, operator-free filling, and utilities that do more with less.
The contradiction everyone’s managing
Executives face a split screen. On one side: headwinds. Construction fit-out and materials costs remain structurally higher than pre-pandemic levels. Tariffs have crept into the bill of materials—from components like syringes and needles to core building metals—introducing line-item friction even for well-scoped projects. Money isn’t free; payback math matters.
On the other side: a CapEx drumbeat that’s impossible to ignore. AstraZeneca announced a $50 billion U.S. investment program through 2030, including its largest-ever manufacturing facility advancing in Virginia. Eli Lilly says its U.S. manufacturing commitments since 2020 now exceed $50 billion, with fresh sites layered onto an already sprawling domestic network. And North Carolina—arguably the cleanest read on biomanufacturing demand—booked more than $10 billion in life-sciences projects in a single year, anchored by one of the decade’s signature expansions.
This is not a “more glass, more labs” cycle. It’s a resilience cycle. The crane count is rising again, but every ton of steel has to earn future flexibility.
What last year told us—and what this year must answer
The Horizons: Life Sciences 2024 report was unambiguous about where the factory is headed. Four signals stood out:
- AI and the digital plant as default. Batch records, analytics, and warehouse operations moved decisively toward paperless and autonomous—because that’s where quality, speed, and staffing realities intersect.
- Continuous by design. Adoption is accelerating from “pilot islands” to routine URSs, helped by global regulatory clarity that gives teams a common playbook to validate against.
- Operator-free filling ahead. The direction of travel is clear, even as tech stacks mature. Quality-by-design meets labor constraints, with safety and sterility as the forcing functions.
- Utilities and sustainability get real. Progress toward renewable electricity, closed systems, and smarter CIP/SIP emerged as both a carbon story and a throughput story.
That was the blueprint. 2025 is the stress test. The questions leaders need answered—precisely the terrain the new Horizons will survey—look like this:
- Where is CapEx actually landing under today’s rates and tariffs? What share is flowing to de-bottlenecking versus brownfield retrofits versus new lines—and what’s the measurable ROI on the digital plumbing that shortens review cycles and release?
- How fast can “continuous” scale beyond islands? With the regulatory playbook in place, which unit operations are clearing validation and business-case hurdles first (perfusion, multi-column capture, inline conditioning), and where does batch still win?
- How do GLP-1 dynamics rewire facility mix? The obesity wave has reordered CapEx—from sterile fill-finish to OSD considerations as oral candidates advance—forcing design hedges that keep tomorrow’s modality pivots off the critical path.
- Which geographies compress risk the most? The Atlantic corridor—from the Triangle through Virginia—shows how incentives, power, logistics, and workforce pipelines translate headlines into hire dates.
Why the 2025 edition will be more than a snapshot
Because the decision variables multiplied. A project in 2025 isn’t just scope, schedule, and budget. It’s tariff exposure, a commissioning realism check, a workforce plan, and a digital-validation strategy—plus a contingency for modality whiplash. That is where Horizons has been most useful: translating sentiment into spec, and trend into punch list.
Last year’s report did that with unusual clarity—quantifying adoption curves and revealing where companies were actually putting dollars even as teams wrestled with cost and validation debt. The fall 2025 edition arrives with more at stake. Those headline investments aren’t one-offs; they’re scaffolding for a multi-year manufacturing strategy that presumes volatility and funds around it. For boards and plant leaders, the decision is no longer whether to build—but how to design for uncertainty without overpaying for optionality.
Read the market before you pour the slab
Rates remain a constraint; materials haven’t fully normalized; trade is a live wire. At the same time, capital is flowing to capacity that can flex, validate quickly, and staff reliably. That’s the paradox Horizons can help resolve—turning hundreds of on-the-ground perspectives into a map of where the industry is truly headed in 2026–27.
If last year’s edition gave leaders the architecture of a smarter plant, this year’s is sure to provide a series of other insights. For an industry that’s building closer to the patient—and closer to the future— clear insights from experts on the ground matters to everyone.
Be sure to sign up for your copy of CRB’s Horizons: Life Sciences 2025 Report!
References & further reading
- CRB — Horizons: Life Sciences 2024: https://go.crbgroup.com/horizons-life-sciences-2024
- CRB — Horizons series & 2025 sign-up: https://www.crbgroup.com/horizons-reports
- AstraZeneca — $50B U.S. investment by 2030 (press release): https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2025/astrazeneca-plans-to-invest-50bn-dollars-in-the-us.html
- Virginia coverage — AstraZeneca’s largest-ever facility: https://virginiamercury.com/2025/07/22/astrazeneca-to-build-its-largest-ever-manufacturing-facility-in-virginia-creating-hundreds-of-jobs/
- Eli Lilly — U.S. manufacturing investment to exceed $50B (press release): https://investor.lilly.com/news-releases/news-release-details/lilly-plans-more-double-us-manufacturing-investment-2020
- North Carolina — $10.8B life-sciences investments in 2024: https://www.ncbiotech.org/news/north-carolina-booked-over-10-billion-life-sciences-investments-2024
- Novo Nordisk — $4.1B Clayton, NC expansion: https://edpnc.com/news/june-2024-novo-nordisk-announcement/
- FDA — ICH Q13: Continuous Manufacturing (guidance): https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/q13-continuous-manufacturing-drug-substances-and-drug-products
- ICH — Q13 Guideline (PDF): https://database.ich.org/sites/default/files/ICH_Q13_Step4_Guideline_2022_1116.pdf
- ENR — Construction Cost Index (history): https://www.enr.com/economics/historical_indices/construction_cost_index_history
- ENR — 1Q 2025 Cost Report (materials & index trends): https://www.enr.com/articles/60363-1q-2025-cost-report-growth-for-some-materials-prices-in-2024
- Cushman & Wakefield — U.S. Life Sciences Fit-Out Cost Guide: https://www.cushmanwakefield.com/en/united-states/insights/life-sciences-fit-out-cost-guide
- USTR — Section 301 tariff increases (fact sheet/FR notice): https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/Section%20301%20Modifications%20Determination%20FRN%20%28Sept%2012%202024%29%20%28FINAL%29.pdf
- White House — Proclamation on Adjusting Aluminum Imports (Section 232): https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/adjusting-imports-of-aluminum-into-the-united-states/
