At a press conference on July 6, 2005, Governor Mark R. Warner announced a $30 million investment by Wyeth, a global leader in pharmaceuticals, consumer healthcare and animal healthcare, at the Wyeth Pharmaceutical Complex and Distribution Center located on Darbytown Road in Eastern Henrico County. The Darbytown Road location handles the distribution, packaging and manufacturing of Wyeth products including gelatin capsules, tablets, gels, creams, tube products, and suspensions. The facility is also an important site for the manufacturing and packing of high-volume liquid products. Scott Denicourt, Managing Director of Plant Operations says, “The investment will be utilized to install highly automated packaging equipment, robotic material handling systems, and electronic batch and inventory control for production data.”

This capital investment will allow Wyeth to increase its current production and packaging volume at its Henrico facility. “For the future of the facility this investment made the most sense to improve plant performance” according to Denicourt. With the expansion, the Darbytown plant is now set to become one of Wyeth’s larger operations in the United States. Wyeth has a total of four facilities in the greater Richmond area, with an administrative office complex and the Wyeth Consumer Healthcare Global Research complex both located close to downtown. The Darbytown Road plant is composed of separate production and distribution centers. The investment speaks well of Henrico County’s ability to keep and attract large corporations to the area as the site beat out proposals from facilities in North Carolina and Tennessee. Governor Warner had high praise for the company, stating “Wyeth has been a long-standing community leader and major employer in the Richmond area for more than 50 years…this maker of major nationally recognized healthcare products will continue to benefit from the Commonwealth’s central East Coast location and its dedicated employees in Central Virginia.”

“Wyeth is a long-time corporate citizen and this announcement is great news for our community. It confirms that Henrico offers a business environment where major corporations can prosper."

Wyeth and Richmond
Wyeth Consumer Healthcare is a division of Wyeth and is one of the world’s leaders in the development, manufacturing and marketing of non-prescription medicines, vitamins and nutritional products. Products from the Henrico County facility include such brands as Chapstick®, Dimetapp®, Anbesol®, Preparation H® and Robitussin®. In addition the facility is responsible for the packaging of Advil Liqui-Gels® and Advil Cold and Sinus®. Wyeth Consumer Healthcare is one of the largest over-the-counter healthcare companies with over $2.5 billion worth of sales in 2004. “Wyeth Consumer Healthcare and Richmond have enjoyed a long history of success together,” according to Doug Rogers, President of Wyeth Consumer Healthcare. “When it came time to look at places to expand some of our operations, it made a great deal of sense to choose the Richmond area.” Indeed, the Wyeth and Richmond tie is strong.

In 1989 American Home Products acquired the AH Robins Company, headquartered in Richmond. American Home Products officially changed its name to Wyeth in March 2002. The acquisition of AH Robins Company was only one of many acquisitions and mergers that transformed American Home Products/Wyeth into one of the largest pharmaceutical powerhouses in the world with markets in over 100 countries around the world.