SLIDESHOW

It takes a lot of ChapStick to keep the world's lip balm fanatics happy.

Never fear. The sole source of all the world's ChapStick -- the Wyeth factory in eastern Henrico County -- can churn out about 165 million sticks a year.

ChapStick is one of several well-known consumer health products made at the plant on Darbytown Road, which employs about 700 people.

Wyeth has spent millions of dollars in recent years upgrading the plant to improve its efficiency.

For good reason. The plant and the company's Richmond area operations are key to Wyeth's $2.7 billion consumer health-care business.

Revenue in the division rose 8 percent in 2007, driven by higher sales of Advil and ChapStick and growing sales of its products overseas.

The local plant "represents a significant production output for the consumer health-care portfolio," said Richard Hayes, the plant's senior director of operations.

Yet the market is challenging, said Scott Denicourt, the plant's managing director.

In the U.S., the over-the-counter health products market is mature and saturated with competitors, including giant Johnson & Johnson, which had $14.5 billion in consumer health-care sales in 2007, and GlaxoSmithKline with sales of $6.4 billion.

Wyeth has faced challenges with its Robitussin and Dimetapp businesses, which hit a rough patch last year after the company voluntarily recalled bottles because their dosing cups did not mark the half-teaspoon level recommended for children ages 2 to 5.

As a result, the plant rolled out 60 million bottles of the cough formulas even though it has the capacity to produce nearly three times that much.

Wyeth, which posted $22.4 billion in total sales last year mostly from its vaccines and prescription drug businesses, is awaiting a Food & Drug Administration ruling on how the products should be marketed.

"We have been going slower the first half of the year until the FDA makes a decision," Denicourt said.

While the brands made at the Darbytown plant -- including Preparation H and Anbesol -- enjoy high customer loyalty, the company is constantly working to develop new versions of its familiar products.

Much of that development work on consumer brands is overseen from the company's product development site on Sherwood Avenue in Richmond.

The brands made here have long been associated with former Richmond-based pharmaceutical company A.H. Robins Co.

The local operations became part of Wyeth, then called American Home Products Corp., through the acquisition of bankrupt A.H. Robins in 1989. American Home Products changed its name to Wyeth in 2002.

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Wyeth is trying to keep production costs low.

"For us, it's about innovation," Denicourt said. "Our focus is to use automation to keep us competitive."

High-speed, robotic packaging equipment for ChapStick, for example, was part of a $30 million factory upgrade that Wyeth began in 2005.

In all, the company has put about $115 million into the plant since 1998, in part to improve production and also to meet evolving regulatory requirements. The plant opened in 1980.

With the upgrades at the plant have come changes for employees, too.

"The biggest change is the automation," said Micky Brown, an associate director at the plant and a 22-year veteran of the company's local operations.

Like many other manufacturers, the company's shift to automated systems requires more skilled labor now than in the past, and it has put more resources into training employees to operate computerized systems.

"It is quite a different workforce today than it was seven or eight years ago, in terms of skills," said Hayes, the senior operations director.

"We have a lot more technical people these days," he said. "When I first came here 15 years ago, I was one of the few engineers. Now, we have dozens more."

Wyeth's investment represents the type of changes that many U.S. manufacturers have made to remain competitive, said Brett Vassey, president of the Virginia Manufacturers Association.

"The pharmaceutical industry is always on the leading edge in automation," Vassey said.

The industry needs to be, he said, because costs for product development and regulation tend to be higher than in other businesses. So cost controls and efficiency are all the more important.

"There is a lot of competition for over-the-counter products," Vassey said. "They are competing against imports and private-label [brands], and they have to look to automation and innovation."

Counterfeiting of popular brands also is a problem.

ChapStick, for example, has dozens, if not hundreds, of competitors in the lip balm category. And the brand is not immune to knock-offs.

"We actually found some counterfeit ChapStick locally," Denicourt said. "It was being manufactured in Pakistan."

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Brands such as ChapStick and Advil also are undergoing constant revision to keep and attract customers.

"We try to have one or two new brands every year," said Larry Small, senior vice president for global product development.

Much of the research is conducted or managed at Wyeth's research and development center on Sherwood Avenue in North Richmond, where Small and a staff of about 250 work.

"We are a central development lab that supports plants around the globe," including sites in Italy, Canada and China, Small said.

International sales have been a major driver of growth. Wyeth reported that international sales of consumer health-care products rose about 16 percent in 2007.

The Richmond research center works to develop the formulas for new products and comes up with the processes to mass-produce them.

"Pharmacists used to make pills 10 at a time. This group makes them 10 million at a time," said Small, himself a pharmacist.

Product development times vary, but researchers have to satisfy many masters, including the company's marketing representatives and regulators such as the FDA and various other public health agencies around the world.

Even ChapStick -- a product that is more than 120 years old -- has to meet FDA regulatory requirements when a new product line is introduced.

ChapStick has more than two dozen varieties, with more in development.

"I think probably the best one right now is orange sherbet," Brown said. "It tastes like one of those old-fashioned creamsicles."
Contact John Reid Blackwell at (804) 775-8123 or jblackwell@timesdispatch.com.