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While you have likely read everything there is to know about the weight loss drugs that have taken over the pharmaceutical industry in recent years, they're doing more than reducing waistlines and inflating profits. They are also fundamentally changing the places where these drugs are produced.
A tiny Danish town of 16,000 people, for example, is experiencing an incredible change thanks to Ozempic and other weight loss drugs produced by pharmaceutical giant, Novo Nordisk.
Curious to know how the town has been impacted and why? Click through the gallery to find out.
Novo Nordisk is one of the world’s largest insulin manufacturers. It’s also the company behind two of the biggest weight loss drugs: Ozempic and Wegovy.
Novo Nordisk is Europe’s most valuable company, surpassing Louis Vuitton. In fact, the company singlehandedly prevented the nation from falling into a recession.
There are concerns about Denmark’s overdependence on a single entity but the company’s gains continue to appear sustainable.
While its headquarters are located just outside Denmark’s capital city of Copenhagen, its production site has long been located in the small town of Kalundborg.
Kalundborg, boasting a population of a mere 16,000 people, is located just an hour and half from the capital city.
The town functions more like a factory, with more than 4,500 (a bit more than 25%) of its residents working for the pharmaceutical giant.
Even those who aren’t employed by Novo Nordisk overwhelmingly harbor some connection to the company. In fact, nearly 3% of all of Denmark’s workforce is tied to the company.
The boost in well-paying labor for Kalundborg’s residents has greatly benefited the town’s development.
Income tax contributions have increased in the town, allowing for the construction of a new train station and a project to develop the town’s pier and new public park.
The town is going to continue to drastically change, with Novo Nordisk promising to invest billions more into the town’s development.
Local businesses, including restaurants and cafés, are experiencing the benefits of the boom, too, with notable increased sales throughout the town.
The town’s mayor, Martin Damm (pictured), attributes the company’s success to luck. Many of Novo Nordisk's innovative medical products have been hits.
Weight loss drugs have certainly been in the spotlight, especially due to celebrity usage and results.
Social media has come up with specific tactics to identify its use, like "Ozempic face" and other terms that may highlight if someone is using the drugs.
But besides its use by the rich and famous, we should not reduce their use simply to aesthetics and smaller frames.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), by 2022, one in eight adults was considered to be obese. The obesity rates had more than doubled in a mere 20-year period.
Weight loss drugs like those Novo Nordisk is producing can change the lives of millions of people around the world, providing a medical intervention for the world’s obesity crisis.
Novo Nordisk’s products are in major competition with an American pharmaceutical, Eli Lilly, in maximizing profits off of “GLP 1 agonist products.”
These drugs essentially replicate the behavior of an appetite-suppressing hormone stored in the gut, which is what drives their effectiveness.
Novo Nordisk is certainly trying to generate as much income as it can from these drugs, and is struggling to fulfill market demands.
Running like a well-oiled machine, Kalundborg is the town that doesn’t sleep. Novo Nordisk’s production site runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
But all its bells and whistles haven’t been great for all members of the local community, especially its non-Western residents.
Many who are living in social housing could greatly benefit from employment at the company’s local site, but few are given the opportunity.
A 2024 article in the Economist uses the example of a former cleaner at the Danish pharmaceutical giant, Bhagya Laxmi Kaxhati.
Kaxhati was a chemical engineer in her native India. She moved to Denmark in the early 2000s, hoping to find a job in her field, but to no avail.
She hoped the rise of Novo Nordisk in Kalundborg would increase her chance of finding skilled labor in her field.
Kaxhati isn’t a unique example. Many non-Western immigrants move to Denmark and greater Europe with skilled backgrounds, seeking jobs in their respective fields.
Yet most face no luck in their job search, requiring them to take service and other low-skill jobs, keeping them in a cycle of low-wage labor.
Despite the disparity in employment acquisition, Kalundborg’s development does benefit those living in the town, disseminating its formerly high unemployment rate.
Sources: (The Economist) (Politico)
See also: Researchers identify a potential natural alternative to Ozempic
How Ozempic changed a small town in Denmark
Tiny Danish town experiences incredible development
LIFESTYLE Drugs
While you have likely read everything there is to know about the weight loss drugs that have taken over the pharmaceutical industry in recent years, they're doing more than reducing waistlines and inflating profits. They are also fundamentally changing the places where these drugs are produced.
A tiny Danish town of 16,000 people, for example, is experiencing an incredible change thanks to Ozempic and other weight loss drugs produced by pharmaceutical giant, Novo Nordisk.
Curious to know how the town has been impacted and why? Click through the gallery to find out.