Nearly three years after announcing plans to build a laboratory in Chesterfield to support its manufacturing operations in Petersburg, Civica Rx is readying plans to kick off the project’s construction.
The Utah-based nonprofit drugmaker said it will break ground this summer on a 50,000-square-foot facility at 11731 Meadowville Lane, in the Meadowville Technology Park near Chester.
The $25 million lab will handle research and development as well as quality testing for Civica’s nearby pharmaceutical plant in Petersburg. Civica plans to hire 50 employees to work out of the lab.
A 10,000-square-foot portion of the Meadowville facility is planned to be occupied by a VCU Medicines for All Institute lab dedicated to scaling drug production.
The general contractor for the project is Hourigan, and HDR was tapped to handle architectural design and engineering.
Civica and Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced the project in 2022. The company said the scope of the construction has since been reduced by 8,000 square feet after preliminary cost projections came in higher than previously estimated.
The project is anticipated to be financed through a mixture of Civica’s own money, state incentives and federal dollars. Civica spokesman Benjamin Jarvela said last week the company hadn’t yet received the federal grant expected to help finance the project.
Civica bought the 9-acre site of the upcoming lab for $795,000 in 2023, according to online land records.
The company’s plans for a Chesterfield lab come as it also eyes further expansion of its Petersburg facility.
Civica is in the early stages of planning an administrative office and warehouse space to expand its existing 140,000-square-foot plant at 1 Civica Way in Petersburg.
Civica hasn’t finalized a construction timeline or square footage for either project, Jarvela said. The office facility would replace a 10,000-square-foot, two-story modular office annex added to the site earlier this year.
The temporary annex was pursued as a quick fix to keep up with the expansion of the plant’s workforce, Civica engineering lead Jason Winfield said.
“It had to do a lot with how we grew the staff. We needed to move quickly on this,” he said.
Civica says it has more than 200 local employees and expects to grow to 350 workers in the region between the Chesterfield and Petersburg facilities.
While the Petersburg plant is operational, it hasn’t yet begun to manufacture commercial drugs. It is still in the midst of testing and securing regulatory approval. The plant’s drugs are anticipated to hit the market in 2026. Civica previously planned to hit that milestone last year.
Civica announced in March that it had struck a partnership with India-based Biocon Biologics in which Biocon will supply material needed for Civica to produce insulin aspart, a fast-acting type of insulin planned to be manufactured for the commercial market at the Petersburg plant.
A group of health systems and philanthropies founded Civica in 2018, intending to create a source for affordable generic drugs. The Petersburg plant is designed to produce insulin and other medicines with three production lines, one each dedicated to vials, prefilled syringes and prefilled pen cartridges. The company says the plant can produce more than 200 million units of medicine per year.
Civica says it supplies about 80 medicines to its member hospitals through contracted manufacturing, and the Petersburg plant would represent Civica’s first in-house production capability.
Civica is part of a regional effort called The Alliance for Building Better Medicine, which is developing a pharmaceutical manufacturing hub in Richmond and Petersburg. Other participants include Richmond-based Phlow Corp., which operates a pharmaceutical ingredient production facility on the same campus as Civica’s plant; the Greater Richmond Partnership; Activation Capital; VCU; VSU; the Community College Workforce Alliance; Walmart; and the cities of Richmond and Petersburg, among others.
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