Johnson & Johnson plans 420-worker plant in Eastern NC, as area gets another biotech boost

For the second time in eight days, the Eastern North Carolina county of Wilson is celebrating the promise of a new pharmaceutical facility.

Last week, the manufacturer of the cold and flu medicine Mucinex pledged to build a 290-worker factory in Wilson. And during an Economic Investment Committee meeting Tuesday, North Carolina awarded a separate incentive for a subsidiary of the pharmaceutical and consumer brand giant Johnson & Johnson to open a plant in the county 50 miles east of Raleigh.

Under its state agreement, Janssen Biotech has committed to creating 420 jobs at a drug substance factory in the city of Wilson. The company pledged to hire these workers between 2027 and 2031 at an average annual wage of at least $108,800. This is more than twice the county’s overall average wage. North Carolina does not announce projects’ median wages when awarding economic incentives.

Johnson & Johnson, Janseen’s parent company, said it will invest just over $1 billion at the site by the end of 2028. In addition to hiring 420 workers, Johnson & Johnson guaranteed it will retain 259 other positions it currently employs across the state.

If it meets these hiring and investment targets, Johnson & Johnson will be eligible to receive up to $13.6 million in payroll tax breaks through a state job development investment grant, or JDIG. North Carolina’s total incentives for the project could reach $30 million, including $13 million from the Golden LEAF Foundation, a nonprofit created in 1999 to help revitalize rural tobacco-dependent manufacturing hotbeds like Wilson.

Combined, the city and county of Wilson awarded Johnson & Johnson an additional incentive package worth up to $54 million over the course of the project.

With Tuesday’s announcement, Eastern North Carolina adds to its reputation for large-scale pharmaceutical manufacturing, as Johnson & Johnson seeks to join Thermo Fisher Scientific, Novo Nordisk, Grifols, Pfizer, and Catalent among biotech companies with major facilities in the region.

Access to labor, roadways, affordable utilities and abundant land has attracted employers to the cluster of counties east of the Triangle says Mark Phillips, who serves as vice president of statewide operations at the nonprofit North Carolina Biotechnology Center. Area stakeholders have branded the region between Wilson, Johnston, and Pitt counties the “Biopharma Crescent.”

Phillips said employees travel from more than 25 surrounding countries to work at some of these newer sites.

“They’re really drawing from these rural communities that may not offer this quality of job,” he said. “When people think manufacturing, typically, they think of a dirty setting in some cases, but these manufacturing jobs are clean jobs working in air conditioning and heating environments year round. It offers a really nice pay, but also the really nice benefits package to really assist these families.”

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