BBC
Students like Ali, Anna K, Anna and Marie (clockwise from top left) are divided between staying in the city
Kalundborg, a town of just 16,000 on the Danish coast about an hour’s drive from Copenhagen, is as close as you can get to a modern gold rush town.
It is the main production center for the slimming drug Wegovy. Semaglutide, used in Wegovy and the diabetes drug Ozempic are made in a factory hereand parent company Novo Nordisk has invested more than $8.5 billion in the city. That’s almost the entire GDP of Monaco.
But it can be difficult to convince people to actually live in the city.
There is one influx of workers and builders into the factory in the morning and an exodus in the afternoon – locals call it the “Novo Queue” and recommend avoiding the town road during these hours every day.
Almost none of the workers stay; they live outside and drive inside.
So if there’s £400,000 of investment per capita, what’s not to like?
Behind the rosy figures, Kalundborg faces many challenges, from dilapidated schools and low incomes to many overweight children.
The grades at state schools for Danish language and mathematics here are below the national average. Some on the outskirts of the city have few indoor or outdoor facilities, with only old swings in the playground.
Some schools in the city are dilapidated
“When you see that, you take one of the big cities around here and say: ‘Well, we’re going to live there and then I can drive to Kalundborg to work,’” says regional councilor Helle Laursen Petersen.
She says these schools struggle to attract experienced teachers, leaving expectations low among many parents.
After all, she says, they think their children will always get a job at the Novo Nordisk factory, so why would they try to go to college?
Ali, Anna K, Anna and Marie from the Gymnasium, the most academic high school in the area, tell me that they want to study.
“It might be interesting later, but right now I think it’s a bit too boring to settle here. I think I would like a bigger city,” says Anna K.
But Ali and Marie are more excited about returning after their studies, hoping for more employment in the city so they can enjoy more of its natural beauty.
Trouble – and hope
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Novo Nordisk is investing in its new factory in the city
Meanwhile, Brian Sonder Anderson, who runs the Blue Angel cinema and heads the local trades association, points out that supermarkets and bakeries are flourishing locally because factory workers flock to them on their lunch breaks.
But other stores, such as shoes and clothing, open and close quickly because of the number of employees living elsewhere.
Many low-income families live here, priced out of the capital Copenhagen, where rents and house prices have soared. Some are on benefits and others depend on factory work.
Kalundborg also has a health problem: in the top 5% of Danish cities, children are overweight.
Novo Nordisk is now that now the most valuable company in Europe with sales last year of more than $33 billion, bringing its market value to more than $500 billion.
The investments in the city are aimed at adding 1,250 jobs to the existing 4,500 employees at the Kalundborg factory and increasing production of its best-selling medicines. Although the company represents about 1% of the Danish workforce, it accounts for a larger share of the growth.
Denmark’s economic growth was 1.1% over the first nine months of 2023. But if you take out the pharmaceutical sector, dominated by Novo, the economy shrank by 0.8%. Some analysts have warned that parts of the country’s economy are at risk of becoming too dependent on the pharmaceutical industry.
The city’s mayor, Martin Damm, is optimistic, emphasizing that more than 1,000 new jobs are created here every year and that some young people are happy to call it home.
“In Europe, people are moving from the countryside to the big cities and this is going in the opposite direction,” he says.
“This is the small town that attracts big investment.”
Miguel, 18, is hopeful about Kalundborg’s future
He also emphasizes that schools are being renovated or already have good facilities – and that rising prosperity will eventually lead to a healthier lifestyle.
Miguel, an 18-year-old student from Madrid studying biotechnology at one of the city’s new university courses, has just joined a local soccer team with players from Brazil, Mexico, Poland and Ukraine.
“There are so many international people in this city and almost everyone I’ve spoken to in English has responded in English,” he says.
Amanda from Brazil insists there are opportunities: she has found a job, placed her two young children in a local school and hopes they will stay here to study.
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The city is home to a famous church with five towers
A new highway is also being built to help alleviate the city’s chronic traffic congestion, but letting people live here is the real solution to that.
Gymnasium students think the city is at a crossroads.
“I think in five years the city will have grown quite a bit – I hope for a multi-multicultural city,” says Anna K.
“If so, I might consider moving back.”
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