Richmond Company Haleon R&D to See $54M in Upgrades

A global consumer healthcare company is injecting tens of millions of dollars into its R&D facility in Richmond’s Northside.

Haleon is investing $54.2 million to upgrade its existing plant at 1211 Sherwood Ave. The center is one of three that the UK-based company uses for research and development for its brands that include Sensodyne toothpaste, Centrum multivitamins, Flonase nasal spray, Advil pain relief pills and Tums antacids.

The investment will modernize the Richmond facility to expand research capabilities and accommodate new tech such as artificial intelligence. It also will support a college internship program that Haleon and Virginia are funding equally.

The program, called the Haleon-Commonwealth Consumer Healthcare Internship Program for Advanced Life Sciences, will provide five-year paid internships for students at Virginia Commonwealth University pursuing pharmaceutical science degrees, as well as summer internships for undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in any college or university in Virginia.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced the investment at an event at the Richmond facility Monday morning, along with Richmond Mayor Danny Avula, Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade Caren Merrick, and Lisa Paley, Haleon’s president for North America.

Youngkin said Virginia competed for the investment, which he said could have been made at other Haleon facilities. The company has two other R&D centers, in England and China, as well as R&D “global hubs” in New Hampshire, Switzerland and Singapore.

Youngkin and Merrick said they met with Haleon CEO Brian McNamara in London last summer to make their case for the company to invest in its Richmond operations. The facility was previously upgraded five years ago with a nearly $17 million investment by Haleon predecessor GSK, which merged with Pfizer in 2019. The company’s earlier lineage includes Wyeth and A.H. Robins Co.

“That investment could’ve gone anywhere, and it came here,” Youngkin said of this latest round of upgrades, which he said will add to the pharmaceutical corridor that’s been growing in Central Virginia between Richmond and Petersburg.

“What’s happening in the world of life sciences in Virginia is equally monumental to the great momentum in business,” Youngkin said, noting Virginia’s ranking by CNBC as the country’s top state for business.

“We have seen this activity around our innovation corridor, this pharma corridor that has developed between Richmond and Petersburg, that is now pulling in Virginia Tech and University of Virginia and Old Dominion (University), that in fact recognizes that at the heart of a great pharma life sciences corridor is, yes, research, and also people,” he said. “The talent is at the heart of it.”

Haleon’s Paley said about 400 of Haleon’s 24,000 employees companywide are based at the Richmond center, which dates back to the 1960s and spans 32 acres north of Virginia Union University between Interstate 64-95 and Brook Road.

In addition to R&D, the Richmond center accommodates technical functions, including consumer science, formulation development, process scale-up, analytical test method development, microbiology, product stability, packaging design and clinical supplies.

Of the investment in the facility, Paley, who is based in New Jersey, said after Monday’s announcement, “There were places that we could have gone around the globe in order to further our R&D centers. This one, to be really clear, is a big hub for us, so it was kind of a re-vote of confidence that we have further growth potential here, and that we have the right mix of all the factors that will help it succeed into the future and thrive.”

The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with the City of Richmond and regional economic development group Greater Richmond Partnership to secure the project, which is set to receive a $950,000 grant through the Virginia Investment Performance Grant program. The performance-based grants are aimed at encouraging capital investment by companies in Virginia.

Haleon’s investment adds to others being made in the local pharma manufacturing scene. Earlier this month, the regional Alliance for Building Better Medicine announced it was awarded nearly $4 million in federal grants to support workforce development with new associate degree programs at Reynolds and Brightpoint community colleges. The Alliance is made up of members such as Civica Rx, which has a drug production facility in Petersburg, and Richmond-based Phlow Corp., which makes pharmaceutical ingredients on the same campus.