Kalundborg, a town of just 16,000 on the Danish coast about an hour’s drive from Copenhagen, is as close to a modern gold rush town as you can get.

It is the main production center for the weight loss 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 (£6.5 billion) in the city. This represents almost the entire GDP of Monaco.

But convincing people to actually live in the city could prove tricky.

There is a influx of workers and builders to the factory in the morning and an exodus in the afternoon – locals call it the “Novo Queue” and recommend avoiding the city road during these hours each day.

Almost none of the workers stay – they live outside and drive home.

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

Behind these rosy numbers, Kalundborg faces many challenges, from dilapidated schools to low incomes to many children being overweight.

Public school results in Danish language and mathematics are below the national average here. Some, on the outskirts of town, have few indoor or outdoor facilities, with just old swings in the playground.

“If you see this, you’ll take one of the big towns around and say, ‘Well, we’ll live there and then I can go to Kalundborg to work,'” regional councilor Helle Laursen Petersen tells me .

She says these schools struggle to attract experienced teachers, which helps fuel many parents’ low expectations.

After all, she says, they think their children will always get jobs at the Novo Nordisk factory, so why bother trying to go to college?

Ali, Anna K, Anna and Marie from Gymnasium, the most academic high school in the area, tell me that they want to go study.

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

But Ali and Marie are more excited about returning after college, hoping to find more job opportunities in the city so they can enjoy more of its natural beauty.

Brian Sonder Anderson, manager of the Blue Angel Cinema and president of the local merchants association, points out that supermarkets and bakeries are booming locally because factory workers flock there during their lunch breaks.

But other stores, such as those selling shoes and clothing, open quickly and then close again due to large numbers of workers living elsewhere.

Many low-income families live here, far from the capital Copenhagen, where rents and property prices have soared, leaving some living on welfare benefits and others relying on factory work.

Kalundborg also has a health problem: it is one of the 5% of Danish towns most affected by overweight children.

Novo Nordisk, for its part, is now the most valuable company in Europe with a turnover last year of more than $33 billion, bringing its market value to more than $500 billion.

The investment in the city aims to create 1,250 jobs for the Kalundborg factory’s current 4,500 employees and accelerate production of its best-selling medicines. While the company represents around 1% of the Danish workforce, it accounts for a larger share of its growth.

Denmark’s economic growth was 1.1% in the first nine months of 2023. But without the pharmaceutical sector, dominated by Novo, the economy shrank by 0.8%. Some analysts have warned that parts of the country’s economy risk becoming too dependent on the pharmaceutical industry.

The city’s mayor, Martin Damm, is optimistic, saying that more than 1,000 new jobs are created here every year and that some young people are happy to live there.

“In Europe, people are moving from rural areas to big cities, and it’s happening in the opposite direction,” he says.

“It’s the small town that attracts big investment.”

He also insists that schools are being renovated or already have good facilities – and that growing prosperity will, over time, lead to healthier lifestyles.

Miguel, an 18-year-old student from Madrid studying biotechnology in one of the city’s new university courses, has just joined a local soccer team made up of players from Brazil, Mexico, Poland and Ukraine.

“There are so many international people in this city and almost everyone I spoke to in English responded in English,” he says.

Amanda, from Brazil, insists the opportunities are there: She’s landed a job, placed her two young children in a local school and hopes they’ll stay here for college.

A new highway is also being built to help ease the city’s chronic traffic jams – but the real solution will be getting people to live here.

Gymnasium students believe the city is at something of a crossroads.

“In five years, I think the city will have grown a lot. I hope it will become a multicultural city,” says Anna K.

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