Blockbuster weight-loss drug supply hit in trade shutdown

As a port strike stretching from New England to Texas halted nearly half of all trade coming into the U.S., customs data shows that critical medical devices and drug components for the booming, expensive weight-loss and diabetes drugs from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly — Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound — are among the trade casualties in the ILA union port work stoppage.

Bills of lading, the digital receipts of freight containers, show that the delivery mechanisms for insulin and weight-loss drugs rely on East Coast ports for incoming trade.

“Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly are both heavily reliant on the Port of Norfolk,” said William George, director of research at ImportGenius, which tracks the customs data.

In the past year, Novo Nordisk has imported through Norfolk 419 twenty-foot equivalent unit, or TEU, containers worth of pharmaceuticals and injection devices that contain semaglutide, a compound in its branded weight-loss drugs, according to George. “Novo fine syringes commonly used for insulin injections come into the U.S. by ocean freight as well,” he said.

Novo Nordisk has raked in nearly $50 billion in sales from Wegovy and Ozempic, with most of that revenue coming from the U.S., its CEO said in recent testimony before the U.S. Senate.

A Novo Nordisk spokesperson said in an email to CNBC that the company has mitigation plans in place to minimize or prevent any production disruption due to seaport strikes. “We plan to ship our products to and from the U.S. via airfreight,” the spokesperson said.

An Eli Lilly spokesperson said the company does not discuss the details of its external supplier relationships.

Dennis Monts, global chief commercial officer at PayCargo, said air sector volumes strengthened in September, peaking about two weeks ago. 

“We are watching October numbers anticipating a surge of air freight for fast-moving and perishable items such as produce, seafood, medical supplies and other just-in-time inventories,” Monts said.

Noushin Shamsili, CEO and president of Nuco Logistics, which specializes in pharmaceutical imports and exports, told CNBC on Monday that the strike comes at a critical time for inventory replenishment for the drug sector. “Almost all of this industry is just on time,” said Shamsili. “Raw materials are being brought in to complete drug manufacturing.”

Approximately 48% of the active pharmaceutical ingredients, or APIs, used in the U.S. are imported from India. Without these APIs, medications cannot be produced. APIs are also manufactured in Europe, and the U.S. points of entry for those are the East Coast ports.

Some of these APIs are critical components needed for the manufacturing of the blockbuster weight-loss drugs.

“The strike by ILA at East and Gulf coast…