Why isn’t the £6bn Danish town behind Wegovy diet pills booming?

Kalundborg is a small town of 16,000 people on the Danish coast, about an hour’s drive from Copenhagen, and is the closest you’ll get to a modern gold rush town.

It is the main production center for the weight loss drug Wegovy. Semaglutide, for Wegovy and the diabetes drug Ozempic are both made in factories hereparent company Novo Nordisk has invested more than $8.5bn (£6.5bn) in the town. This is almost the entire gross domestic product of Monaco.

But convincing people to actually live in the town can be tricky.

There is one Workers and builders flock to factories There are heavy footfalls in the morning and exodus in the afternoon – locals call it the “new queue” and advise avoiding the town’s roads at these times of the day.

Few workers remain – they live outside and drive in.

So what’s not to like when investment reaches £400,000 per resident?

Behind the optimistic numbers, Kalundborg faces many challenges, from dilapidated schools and low incomes to many children being overweight.

Danish and maths scores in public schools here are below the national average. Some areas on the outskirts of town have few facilities inside and outside, with only old swings on the playground.

“If you saw this, you would choose a big city near here and say, ‘Well, we’ll live there and then I can drive to Kalundborg and go to work,'” district councilor Heller Laursen · Peterson told me.

She said the schools were struggling to attract experienced teachers, which had led to lower expectations among many parents.

After all, she said, they assumed their children would always find jobs at Novo Nordisk plants, so why bother going to college?

Ali, Anna K, Anna and Marie attended the Gymnasium, the most academic secondary school in the area, and they told me they wanted to leave here to study.

“It might get interesting later, but for now, I think it’s a little too boring to live here – I think I want a bigger city,” says Anna K.

But Ali and Mary are more excited to return after completing their studies and hope for more job opportunities in the town so they can enjoy the natural beauty here more.

Meanwhile, Brian Sonder Anderson, who runs the Blue Angel cinema and heads the local traders’ association, noted that local supermarkets and bakeries were booming as factory workers flocked there during their lunch breaks .

But other stores, such as those selling shoes and clothes, reopened quickly and then closed as large numbers of workers lived elsewhere.

Many low-income families live here, far from the capital Copenhagen, where rents and house prices have soared, leaving some families dependent on welfare and others on factory jobs.

Kalundborg also has health problems – it is in the top 5% of Danish towns with the highest proportion of overweight children.

At the same time, Novo Nordisk Now the most valuable company in Europe Revenue last year exceeded $33 billion, giving it a market capitalization of more than $500 billion.

The investment in the town is aimed at adding 1,250 jobs to the Kalundborg site’s existing 4,500 employees and increasing production of its best-selling medicines. While the company accounts for about 1% of Denmark’s workforce, it accounts for a much larger share of its growth.

In the first nine months of 2023, the Danish economy grew by 1.1%. Some analysts have warned that parts of the country’s economy may be overly reliant on the pharmaceutical industry.

The town’s mayor, Martin Damm, is optimistic, insisting that more than 1,000 new jobs are created every year and that some young people are happy to call the area home.

“In Europe, people are moving from rural areas to big cities, but it’s the opposite,” he said.

“This is this small town [that] attract large investments.

He also insisted that schools were being renovated or already had good facilities, and that growing prosperity would ultimately lead to healthier lifestyles.

Miguel, an 18-year-old student from Madrid who is studying biotechnology on a new university course in the town, has just joined a local team made up of players from Brazil, Mexico, Poland and Ukraine football team.

“There are a lot of international people in this town, and almost everyone I spoke to in English responded in English,” he said.

Amanda, from Brazil, insists the opportunity is here – she has found a job placing her two young children in a local school and hopes they will stay here to attend university.

A new motorway is also being built to help ease the town’s chronic congestion problems, but getting people to live here is the real solution.

Students at the liberal arts school believe the town is at a crossroads.

“Five years from now, I think this town [will have] Growing up a lot – I want to be a multicultural town,” Anna K.

“If that’s the case, I might consider going back.”