Pharma’s US Manufacturing Push Faces a Long Investment Horizon

According to Franco Stevanato, CEO of Stevanato Group, tariff policies are beginning to influence how pharmaceutical companies think about manufacturing location and supply chain resilience, but the shift toward localization will take time. While tariffs have created temporary cost pressures for the company, including surcharges passed on to customers, those impacts have largely been accepted by clients and are not yet driving immediate supply chain reconfiguration.

Stevanato operates 13 sites across nine countries and generally supplies products regionally, though certain items continue to be manufactured in Europe. Capacity expansion in the US—particularly at the company’s facility in Fishers, IN—is underway, but meaningful ramp-up will take several more years. In the short term, the company cannot quickly redirect production or fully restructure its global supply network.

Despite these near-term headwinds, Stevanato sees tariffs as a catalyst for longer-term opportunity. The company already has significant campus infrastructure in place, positioning it to benefit as customers reassess their footprint strategies. Over a three- to four-year horizon, leadership expects more pharmaceutical manufacturers to increase investment in US-based production as they seek to mitigate trade risks, improve regional supply continuity, and align manufacturing closer to end markets.

However, the pace of change is constrained by the realities of pharmaceutical operations. Site development, validation, regulatory approvals, and capacity scaling require long lead times, making rapid shifts impractical. Decisions around localization must also align with pharma companies’ internal investment cycles and long-term network planning.

Overall, tariffs are not triggering immediate supply chain realignment, but they are accelerating strategic discussions around regionalization and domestic capacity. For packaging companies like Stevanato, this evolving landscape presents a medium-term growth opportunity as customers gradually move toward more localized and resilient manufacturing models—particularly in North America—while managing short-term operational and cost pressures.

Stevanato also discussed the strategic advantages to expanding production within the US and much more.

A transcript of his conversation with PC can be found below.

PC: Do you view the current trend toward US-based manufacturing as a short-term response to trade policy shifts, or as part of a lasting reconfiguration of global pharma supply chains?

Stevanato: It’s a really important question, but also difficult to answer today. I’ll try to answer with my angle of experience. When clients decide to put investments, no matter if you speed up, it is three to five years.

Deciding to do a plant, to purchase the line, install the line, to the validation—we talk about three to five years. Today, if you do the picture, the official statement that few hundred billions of investment for CapEx are readdressing United States, then what will happen, what it will be direction of Far East, because there is several 10s of biosimilars in the Far East that may be taking benefit of this.

It's difficult for me Nico to understand what will happen after five years. Today, we see clients very focused on investing in the United States or using suppliers, including CMOs, in the United States. But again, we always have to consider for pharma companies, it’s not that you can change, you can drive it in three months. It takes three to five years.

What will happen in three to five years is really difficult to predict, because our big clients, they have the tendency to be global, Nicohey want to be global. And we know that there are billions of clients all around the globe, and this is another big element to think about.