About Us

In 1996, Lilly in the UK received the Queen´s Award for Export Achievement. This was followed in January 1998 by the award of the U.K. Prix Galien for the discovery of Zyprexa, discovered at the company´s research facilties in Surrey, reflecting a breakthrough in the fight against mental illness. Then in 1999, Zyprexa was selected as one of only four pharmaceutical innovations to be displayed in the Millennium Dome and in 2000 earned the company a Queen´s Award for Innovation, followed for the second time in five years by the Queen´s Award for Export Achievement in 2001.

The Indianapolis based parent company set up its first overseas subsidiary in a small office in Dean Street, London, back in 1934. By September 1939, the company had built a major manufacturing plant in Basingstoke, which was based on an identical building at Lilly´s global head office in Indianapolis and immediately found itself at the centre of the war effort. Camouflaged brown and green, (much to the dismay of its architects), the plant started manufacturing antiseptics, and creams for sunburn and frostbite.

After the war the Government contracts went, but new product lines came in from the research laboratory of Eli Lilly and Company in America. In 1967, reflecting the increasing importance of British research in the pharmaceuticals arena, Lilly opened its first research facility outside the US, at Erl Wood, Windlesham, Surrey.

Over the years, the research site has conducted research in a number of therapeutic areas including inflammation, allergy, parasitology and neurosciences. Today, the focus of the research is in the field of neuroscience.

The centre has been the site of several scientific discoveries. For example the first human dose of recombinant human insulin was administered here. It was also in Surrey that a new treatment for schizophrenia was discovered.

Whilst Lilly´s largest European manufacturing plant is based at Speke, seven miles from Liverpool. Bought from the Distiller´s Company in 1963, it is the site of a major fermentation plant for producing the raw materials for animal health products, as well as human growth hormone. It was here, on Christmas Eve 1945, that the first batch of penicillin was manufactured.