Drugmaker Merck opens state-of-art $1B facility to manufacture HPV Gardasil, other vaccines

DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) -- Drugmaker Merck announced Tuesday the opening of a new facility in North Durham.

The $1 billion plant will manufacture the HPV vaccines Gardasil and Gardasil 9, while the site continues to produce vaccines against measles, mumps, rubella, and chickenpox, among other illnesses

"This level of investment and commitment speaks so powerfully to the work we do here in Durham," Amanda Taylor, vice president and plant manager at the Merck Manufacturing Division site in Durham, said. "To see the pride and the energy of the people who work here and are helping drive this evolution in our capabilities is just phenomenal."

For at least two decades, Merck has been in the Bull City, producing millions of doses and creating thousands of jobs. Merck said it now employs more than 1,000 workers in Durham.

"We're talking $1 billion expansion," Durham Mayor Leonardo Williams said. "That means more opportunities for more jobs right here in Durham, more training programs that we could actually employ, just more opportunities for them to become a bigger, more impactful corporate neighbor."

ABC11 Eyewitness News spoke with Mayor Williams as he was in D.C. to talk about the economy and its impacts on the Bull City with other leaders nationwide. Williams said the expansion is a "great advantage" at the local level to strengthen the economy.

"If Merck is expanding their footprint, we're expanding opportunities to have more workforce development," Williams said.

The expansion comes as the life sciences industry is "growing dramatically" in North Carolina, according to the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, also known as NCBiotech.
Senior vice president for science and business development, Mary Beth Thomas, said in just 2024, there were 25 different company announcements about growth and expansion.

"Of those 25 announcements, there were 4,500 jobs that are proposed to be made, and that ends up equating to over $10 billion of investment from those companies influencing 16 different communities across the state," Thomas said. "So this is really dramatic, but that growth has been really incredibly high here in Durham County."

Despite the uncertainty at the federal level under the Trump Administration, including threats to medical research funding, which is a core aspect of the life sciences industry, the outlook appears healthy, according to Thomas.

"We have a lot of great institutions that have not only gotten started but are actively expanding in North Carolina," Thomas said. "They are significant investments that are not going to go away in just an overnight type of situation. They will continue, and our hope is they will continue to grow here in North Carolina."

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