Bear Rock in Scott County was named in honor of a local trapper who caught two bear cubs at the spot. A short hike to the spot (perhaps undertaken during a more hospitable time of year) offers sweeping views across Little Stony Creek Gorge.
Advanced manufacturers in Virginia are working to solve crucial production
Booster
Booming Virginia clusters provide a supply chain blueprint for increasing drug accessibility, affordability
Milk to Mollusks
Virginia food and beverage processors drive sustainability through production practices
Anticipating
Manufacturers’ Site Needs
Through targeted, increased investment, Virginia looks to prepare project-ready sites for manufacturing projects
A Security Boost in Hampton Roads
The AUKUS partnership is poised to grow
Virginia-built subs
Hitting a Lofty Target
T.R.U. Ball/AXCEL Archery uses VEDP trade programs to reach Olympians from its Amherst County home
Drake Goolsby
The State of Manufacturing in America’s Top State for Business
VIRGINIA’S RECOGNITION as America’s Top State for Business in CNBC’s 2024 rankings is a testament to the Commonwealth’s longstanding strengths. The main elements that make Virginia a great place for manufacturing — a top-notch education system, a skilled workforce, outstanding logistical advantages, and a highly ranked business climate — have been recognized as best in class for decades. But it’s the way the Commonwealth responds to business needs that keeps us at the head of the pack, with site development efforts through the Virginia Business Ready Sites Program (VBRSP) helping to seal the top spot.
Virginia’s manufacturing base spans a wide variety of key products, from the craft breweries, wineries, and distilleries across the Commonwealth to the food and beverage manufacturers concentrated in the Shenandoah Valley, from wood products from Virginia’s abundant forests to the most advanced tech and aerospace offerings. These major companies benefit from Virginia’s strong manufacturing culture, outstanding infrastructure, top-notch workforce, and competitively priced utilities.
This issue of Virginia Economic Review goes in depth on the Commonwealth’s manufacturing ecosystem, highlighting Virginia’s strengths in three key manufacturing areas — advanced
manufacturing, biopharma/life sciences, and food and beverage production. We highlight site considerations for manufacturing projects and the way the VBRSP is helping companies minimize risk and maximize speed to market on new projects, discuss how the Virginia Talent Accelerator Program helps manufacturing companies solve staffing needs, and profile a Lynchburg-area archery equipment manufacturer that has used VEDP trade offerings to get its products in the hands of Olympic medalists.
Also inside are discussions with two key thought leaders in Virginia manufacturing: Brett Vassey, president and CEO of the Virginia Manufacturers Association, and Drake Goolsby, chief commercialization officer at Luna Labs, a Charlottesville company that helps develop advanced technologies for government, military, and industrial clients.
We hope you enjoy this issue chronicling the ways Virginia companies are innovating in the manufacturing space and how the Commonwealth is empowering that innovation.
Jason El Koubi President and CEO, Virginia Economic Development Partnership
LEFT: Mountainous Nelson County is home to the community of Wintergreen and Wintergreen Resort, a four-season mountain retreat on the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The resort offers 45 holes of championship golf, seasonal skiing, snowboarding and snowtubing, and a full-service destination spa.
Facts Figures
Customized Workforce Training
Business Facilities, 2024
#1 #4 #5
Best Graduate Industrial Engineering Programs
U.S. News & World Report, 2024
Best Undergraduate Industrial/Manufacturing Programs
U.S. News & World Report, 2024
2.5%
Projected change in manufacturing employment in Virginia, 2022—2032
Virginia Works, 2024
National Association of Manufacturers, 2022 8.3%
Manufacturing share of total gross state output in Virginia
National Association of Manufacturers, 2022 6%
Manufacturing share of nonfarm employment in Virginia
TOP 10 LARGEST MANUFACTURING EMPLOYERS IN VIRGINIA
Source: Virginia Employment Commission, 2024
Selected Virginia Wins
Afton Scientific, a manufacturer of sterile injectables, will invest over $200 million to expand its biopharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Albemarle County, creating hundreds of new jobs. Virginia successfully competed with several states for the project.
Afton Scientific is a contract development and manufacturing organization with a history of innovation in the biopharmaceutical space. The company’s work supports critical, life-saving therapies and chronic disease treatments by performing aseptic fill-finish for products ranging from pre-clinical to commercial-scale manufacturing across various therapeutic areas. The company received a majority investment from private equity firm Arlington Capital Partners, and the expansion will enable Afton to implement newer manufacturing therapies, treat new diseases, and serve more people.
The Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP) worked with Albemarle County and the Central Virginia Partnership to secure the project for Virginia. Governor Glenn Youngkin approved a grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund to assist Albemarle County with the project.
Afton Scientific rendering, Albemarle County
Support for Afton Scientific’s job creation will be provided through the Virginia Talent Accelerator Program, ranked the No. 1 Customized Workforce Training program in the United States by Business Facilities in 2024. The program, created by VEDP in collaboration with higher education partners, accelerates new facility startups through the direct delivery of recruitment and training services that are fully customized to a company’s unique products, processes, equipment, standards, and culture. All program services are provided at no cost to qualified new and expanding companies as an incentive for job creation.
Afton Scientific is also a current participant and a past graduate of the Virginia Leaders in Export Trade program, which assists Virginia exporters that have firmly established their domestic operations and are committed to international exporting as a growth strategy.
This announcement represents an exciting advancement in providing critical, life-saving therapies to more Americans, and Afton Scientific is thrilled about our expansion in Central Virginia. The involvement of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership and Albemarle County and the Commonwealth’s support for local businesses were critical to our ability to bring advanced manufacturing jobs and economic growth to the area.
THOMAS THORPE CEO, Afton Scientific
Selected Virginia Wins
Central Virginia
Afton Scientific
Jobs: 100+ New Jobs
CapEx: $200M
Locality: Albemarle County
Hampton Roads
Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace Inc.
Jobs: 180 New Jobs
CapEx: $71M
Locality: James City County
Currie Medical Inc.
Jobs: 60 New Jobs
CapEx: $1.2M
Locality: City of Norfolk
Sirius Analysis
Jobs: 105 New Jobs
CapEx: $305K
Locality: City of Virginia Beach
Greater Fredericksburg
Marble Systems
Jobs: 59 New Jobs
CapEx: $9.7M
Locality: Caroline County
I81-I77 Crossroads
Electro-Mechanical, LLC
Jobs: 109 New Jobs
CapEx: $16.6M
Locality: Washington County
Northern Virginia
American Type
Culture Collection
Jobs: 75 New Jobs
CapEx: $54.7M
Locality: Prince William County
Granules
Consumer Health
Jobs: 99 New Jobs
CapEx: $1.5M
Locality: Prince William County
Optimum Technologies LLC
Jobs: 40 New Jobs
CapEx: $999K
Locality: Loudoun County
Northern Shenandoah Valley
AXYS
Jobs: 46 New Jobs
CapEx: $2.2M
Locality: City of Winchester
Shenandoah Valley
Shamrock Farms
Jobs: 28 New Jobs
CapEx: $59M
Locality: Augusta County
South Central
Virginia
Shalag U.S., Inc.
Jobs: 52 New Jobs
CapEx: $16.6M
Locality: Mecklenburg County
Southern Virginia TECHnista, LLC
Jobs: 15 New Jobs
CapEx: $1.6M
Locality: Pittsylvania County
Southwest Virginia VFP Inc.
Jobs: 50 New Jobs
CapEx: $5M
Locality: Scott County
Northern Shenandoah Valley
Northern Virginia
Shenandoah Valley
Central Virginia
Washington, D.C.
Greater Fredericksburg
Lynchburg Region
Southern Virginia
South Centr al Virg inia
Greater Richmond
Northern Neck
Middle Peninsula
Virginia’s Gateway Region
Hampton Roads
Easte rn Shor
PRioritizing Productivity
A Conversation With Brett Vassey
Brett Vassey is president and CEO of the Virginia Manufacturers Association (VMA), a trade association that supports manufacturing operations across Virginia. VEDP President and CEO Jason El Koubi spoke with Vassey about his organization’s mandate and efforts, the most important workforce and skills considerations for the industry, and what manufacturers are looking for in a site.
Jason El Koubi: Please give us a high-level overview of VMA. What’s the organization’s mission, and how do you work with manufacturers across the Commonwealth of Virginia?
Brett Vassey: Our mission has been similar for 102 years, believe it or not — the productivity and profitability of a factory floor. Everything we do is derived from that very simple focus. The services we provide to manufacturers have changed over the years, but the mission hasn’t changed substantially. Our services today focus primarily on government and regulatory affairs, but then we’ve had to branch out to improve our factories’ productivity and competitiveness.
We have built our own workforce training organization, the Manufacturing Skills Institute. It serves several thousand people a year. We actually expanded into multiple states in order to follow where our manufacturers have other branch plants. We also have a focus around professional development. We do events, seminars, webinars, etc., all around issues related to environment health and safety, workforce development, and the topics that help plants with vertical business units focus on efficiency and operations.
We’ve had to respond to acute needs in the market and with our member companies to provide different voices for different vertical industries within manufacturing. One affiliate we started in 2010 was the Virginia Craft Brewers Guild, a separate organization. It’s wonderful to see an industry be created and flourish all within your own time horizon as an executive.
Lately, we’re trying to resolve some major issues with improving female workforce participation. A few years ago, we affiliated with Women in Manufacturing (WIM), a national trade organization, and created its Virginia chapter, which is now one of the fastest-growing WIM chapters in the country. We now have hundreds of female executives and the only mentoring program in the country.
We’ve tried to keep our focus on our mission of productivity and profitability, while providing unique voices and opportunities for the vertical industries within manufacturing, and we’re going to continue building those out into the future. We’re looking at defense and food and beverage and a few other verticals over the next couple of years. It’s exciting to be part of a dynamic industry that’s always looking at the next big innovation and expects the trade association to come along as well.
El Koubi: One of the big issues VMA deals with is related to the workforce. Many call it the skills gap, particularly in the manufacturing sector. Give us a sense of what VMA has been doing on this front. What can leaders at the state or local level do to better align what’s happening in education and workforce development with the needs of manufacturing sector employers?
Vassey: This year is our Manufacturing Skills Institute’s 10th anniversary. We started with a very broad mission of closing the skills gap, and we’ve added closing the gender gap in the manufacturing workforce. That’s a lot easier said than done because most workforce training is done by government institutions. There aren’t very many of us in the nonprofit sector doing workforce training. Then you’ve got a variety of vendors with programs and services that are maybe in the for-profit space, and of course they’re trying to sell to the government institutions. So that market is very difficult to break through.
Then you have added complexity in a sector of the economy like manufacturing operating 24/7/365 — there’s no downtime, for the most part. They’ve got to fill positions because there
are huge risks, not only to production, but also safety. And they have to be very purposeful and intentional around training before they put somebody into a manufacturing environment. So, training is extremely important and they have to work quickly. The government educational system is built around semesters, and that just doesn’t work for most manufacturing occupations.
The paradigm shift from 10 years ago to today is that today, not everybody needs a four-year degree, but everyone needs higher education. We have lasered in on fast-tracking industry credentials to 10 to 12 weeks.
We focus on the alignment of occupations to industry credentials through skills mapping. It sounds simple, but it’s difficult to do for lots of reasons. HR departments are often fixed in the way they’ll do business. Oftentimes, government education institutions simply don’t know what industry credentials exist and how to do the mapping.
The largest challenge is getting as many states as possible to go along with our message, which is to embrace industry credentials for the majority of workers, not just some. Stop constantly surveying and trying to come up with one-off customized programs and focus on aligning skills credentials to specific occupations in high-demand industries.
If you take principal occupations that are in demand, you can easily map all of those to industry credentials today, whether it’s the health care industry or manufacturing. You do it through skills alignment. You then understand how many people are being produced by the government education system. Then the Commonwealth can start setting policy to say, “Right now we’re funding a program at institution X that’s producing outcome Y, but there’s no demand for anybody in those fields in that region’s occupations. Perhaps we need to reappropriate money to another region where there is a demand for those fields.” And then, overall, “Are we adequately funding industry credential attainment and higher education to be competitive?”
I can tell you right now that the answer is no. Virginia ranks 35th in manufacturing credential attainment as a percentage of overall credentials through the government education system. We need to be in the top 10. VEDP’s Virginia Talent Accelerator Program has really shined a light on this. The state that gets this right is the state that’s going to win the projects of the future. That’s the bottom line.
El Koubi: Your summary encapsulates a whole lot of ground and issues that are so important. I’ll use this opportunity to make a shameless plug
for the Virginia Office of Education Economics, which is doing pioneering work on understanding the relationship between education and workforce and the needs of the labor market — connecting education to opportunity, if you will.
I’m reminded of a data point I think everybody needs to understand. You’ll see something similar in other states, but in Virginia, there are something like 2 million adult workers who have no education beyond high school, and most of them are in the labor force with adult responsibilities. Going back for a twoyear or four-year degree is not only not what’s needed by industry in most cases, it’s just not a practical solution for people trying to provide for their families.
Tell me more about what occupations are on the demand side. Which ones are most prominent and, in particular, which skills are you seeing in high demand by manufacturers?
Vassey: The occupations that I would say are acute needs haven’t changed in the better part of a decade, largely because we’ve had waves of retirements over the last 10 years. Right now, about 27% of our workforce is over 55, so we’re looking at another wave coming. Production occupations have been the highest demand for the better part of a decade. Those come in different
titles, depending upon the company or industry within the manufacturing sector, but they’re all production occupations.
They’re the most difficult to fill because they require core competencies people rarely have exposure to because these jobs are multi-craft. You’ve got to understand the equipment you’re working with. Most equipment is now programmable logic controllers, so you’ve also got to understand not only a bit about electricity, but probably pneumatics. You certainly will need to understand a bit about safety. In certain occupations, you’ll need to know a great deal about it.
You’ve also got to be able to do equipment troubleshooting. Our technicians who run production equipment work on entirely customized pieces or products. All of them need the ability to do some troubleshooting, and often maintenance, on their equipment. That used to be the purview of maintenance technicians, which is another major demand. It’s not the traditional, “Well, I’m a maintenance technician for just our mechanical systems,” or, “I just work on electricity.” Those are also multi-craft. Everything is becoming multi-craft, and you’ve got to be able to do a little bit of maintenance and troubleshooting, if not a great deal.
Applied mathematics is another area
where we see a lot of people fail in their pursuit of these technical credentials. Maybe math wasn’t exciting in high school and they didn’t pursue it. Or they’ve been out of school a while and coming back to get a credential, but algebra is something either they didn’t learn or they’ve forgotten. So, with a lot of training we have to reintroduce applied mathematics or they won’t get some of the higher-order concepts needed to work in this digital manufacturing environment.
El Koubi: It’s a fascinating perspective and highlights a couple of important things to keep in mind. One is just how rapidly these occupations are evolving within the manufacturing context. Another is the importance of understanding the skills.
Let’s shift to infrastructure. One of this year’s great moments in Virginia’s economic development was in July 2024, when CNBC highlighted Virginia’s infrastructure strengths by naming the Commonwealth America’s Top State for Business.
A big part of it this year was infrastructure. It’s something that America needs to invest in generally. We’ve got many infrastructure assets needing maintenance or repair. In many cases, we need new infrastructure. One of the big reasons that Virginia secured
the top spot is because of great work on site development. What do you hear from manufacturers on this front?
Vassey: Generally, we hear almost no complaints other than congestion in key markets — that there just isn’t enough land, asphalt, and concrete. But they’re used to that and they understand that, and even that is getting better.
The big one is Interstate 81. When we talk about big infrastructure projects, the two things that manufacturers generally laser in on are The Port of Virginia and I-81 improvements. We have to focus on those transportation corridors, and we’ve done a good job in Virginia expanding some of those congestion points and hot spots. There are still a few more to go, but I think they’re making sufficient progress so we can get up and down I-81.
In VMA’s Manufacturing Competitiveness Index, state transportation expenditures as a percentage of states’ total expenditures is one metric we use to give a sneak peek into how each state prioritizes its infrastructure spending. Virginia ranks third in the nation. That’s a testament to where we have prioritized our dollars for infrastructure.
Manufacturers aren’t necessarily looking for everything to be up in a shiny new building they can go operate in
tomorrow. But they are looking for sites that are ready and can be up within 12 months, because that’s generally the time horizon for their decision-making. And they don’t want to get delayed with permits. They don’t want to have a conversation like, “We can get power and we can get gas and we can get water and sewer there within five years.” That’s not what they’re looking for. I think VEDP has made the case that we don’t necessarily have to build shell buildings all over the state like we used to 25 years ago to be successful, but we do have to have sites ready to go that can be prepermitted and up to meet the needs of customers within a very short time.
Virginia is still blessed with a couple of industries that most states don’t have anymore. We still have a very vibrant pulp and paper industry. We still have a vibrant chemical industry, and we’re home to steel and metal production plants. All of those are dependent upon good, reliable, affordable electricity and natural gas, and we have world-class utilities that have done an excellent job of focusing on reliability first.
El Koubi: You made reference to something I want to talk a bit more about, and that’s the Virginia Manufacturing Competitiveness Index. I believe it’s produced by you and your
team at VMA, as well as the Virginia Industry Foundation. Virginia is ranked No. 7, so, reasonably well. Give us a sense of why Virginia ranks so highly.
Vassey: The reason we’re so bullish on it is that it’s not weighted. All metrics in all categories are single-weight. We don’t put our thumb on the scale and say, “This is more important this year.” It really gives folks an apples-to-apples comparison of where states stand.
We rank No. 2 in the country in workers’ compensation premiums because we have a very stable workers’ comp system. That’s extremely important to manufacturers. We want our peers to be safe because that keeps premiums down and experience ratings positive. It’s been a hallmark of Virginia’s business climate, in addition to competitive electricity and availability of competitive natural gas.
When you look at workforce, the share of veterans in our population puts us at No. 1 in the country. That’s because veterans are incredibly reliable, well-trained, missiondriven team members. Bringing them on a manufacturing site is one of the No. 1 priorities of manufacturers. We look at all these things in total, and this core set of metrics lets us know where the levers need to be pulled to improve our productivity.
El Koubi: International trade has come into focus again in our national politics in a big way. What is the manufacturing community in Virginia and around the country saying about trade policy?
Vassey: Prior to 2020, the phrase “supply chain” was unknown to most people outside of manufacturing and industry. Post-2020, post-COVID, everybody knows that phrase. For the first time in modern history, people saw shelves empty. In our opinion, that created a psychological effect where people finally understood just how fragile the U.S. market was from the standpoint of certain products.
When we think about international trade, for the first time we have the attention of not only the public, but also economic development, which, with the notable exception of your agency and one other agency, has historically been focused on business recruitment. Now, all of a sudden, the question, “How can we help improve the supply chain of existing industry, and how can we increase more opportunities for them to access other markets?” has become more important today, I think, than it’s ever been.
You’re also trying to convince small business owners to diversify their businesses so that when times are tough,
different markets are good ways to diversify future sales so they can weather those storms, whether they’re domestic or foreign, or if there’s a disruption in the supply chain. It’s all about risk mitigation.
That’s often difficult when you have a bird in the hand — you’re focused on that. Sometimes looking at diversifying your supply chain is a difficult sell. But our opinion is that Virginia is poised because of our location, our infrastructure, and our very focused economic development opportunities.
El Koubi: Let’s look ahead. As we talk, we are less than a month away from the U.S. presidential election. What are manufacturers thinking about for 2025 and beyond?
Vassey: Manufacturers talk about two things, and I won’t include workforce, because they talk about that at every meeting. That’s a perennial. 2024 and 2025 are critical years for the manufacturing sector. Regulatory predictability is a major concern — what direction will that regulatory environment go? Will it become more hyper-regulatory? Will we have more challenges, whether it be air regulation, water regulation, or whatever? Will workplace rules become more difficult and create advantages or disadvantages?
The unknown paralyzes industry a little bit. You’re seeing that right now. They’re trying to figure out what kind of federal regulatory environment they’ll have to work with, whether it be the workplace, the workforce, or environment health and safety. All of those are risks they try to mitigate.
The second thing we talk about is energy, which has been integrated into every single policy consideration at the federal level. Other than perhaps data centers, the manufacturing sector is the most energy-intensive. When folks say to us, “We’re going to eliminate natural gas from the marketplace,” that’s an existential threat to an entire segment of the manufacturing economy.
What opportunities are going to be out there in renewable energy? Virginia is home to one of the most vibrant nuclear industries in the world. We think there’s huge opportunity in the advanced nuclear and small modular reactor markets for zero-carbon electricity generation in the future. And when I say future, we’re looking at the first commercial units in 2030 to 2032. It’s a risk, but there’s also potential reward in creating some value out of zero-carbon goals. Even if those aren’t achievable, trying to get there will open up opportunities. For us specifically, we see
opportunity around the area of advanced nuclear. That is positive, but we need stable state and federal policy to help usher in that wave of technology, because it’s incredibly expensive and highly regulated, and it isn’t going to do the economy any good if it’s unaffordable.
All those things create a little bit of unknown, both on the energy side and the regulatory side. The next 24 months will shake all that out. The sooner elected officials, candidates, and leaders come to some rational conclusions about what they’re going to do in that space, the faster industry will respond, letting go of some capital and starting to build again.
El Koubi: Brett, thank you so much for this great conversation, and thank you for your partnership and leadership every day here in Virginia.
Vassey: Thank you, Jason. For the full interview, visit www.vedp.org/Podcasts
ON THE COVER
To create the headline on the cover of this issue, VEDP teamed up with 3D Herndon in Fairfax County, a full-service 3D printing, 3D scanning, and prototype design company that helps commercial, educational, and government customers innovate through access to additive manufacturing technologies. Using digital 3D model technology, the headline was created and printed via 3D printer.
RETHINKING THE IMPOSSIBLE
Advanced manufacturers in Virginia are working to solve crucial production problems
3D printing capabilities to create more than 500 tools and fixtures, saving significant
LEFT: MELD Manufacturing in Montgomery County is home to the world’s largest additive manufacturing apparatus, the “Jointless Hull” machine, designed to print seamless hulls for U.S. Army tanks as large as 20 feet by 30 feet by 12 feet in size.
UPPER RIGHT: At its Pulaski County plant, Volvo Trucks North America has utilized
time and more than $1,000 per part.
LOWER RIGHT: The Federation for Advanced Manufacturing Education program from Richard Bland College and the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing trains students on advanced manufacturing skills.
Speed and efficiency are essential competitive edges for any manufacturing operation. Yet the growing adoption of advanced manufacturing techniques isn’t just boosting efficiency with how goods are produced — it’s changing the types of goods that can be made and where they are produced. Companies are finding that new types of manufacturing technology can deliver levels of precision never before possible, creating safer, more secure, more sustainable, and higher-performing products. In some cases, advanced manufacturing technologies are breaking down barriers to production. And much of this work is advancing as a result of strong collaboration and investment across Virginia.
A PRODUCTIVE ECOSYSTEM
Additive manufacturing broadly describes the application of raw materials, one layer at a time, to create a finished product. 3D printers are among the most familiar pieces of equipment for additive manufacturing, but these technologies vary widely. In addition to general manufacturing applications, the defense industry is invested in advancing additive manufacturing because the technology promises to revolutionize the speed and strength with which materials are made. Because additive manufacturing adds precisely the amount of material needed to create a finished part, it reduces the amount of raw material required, significantly lowering costs.
Virginia manufacturers have long put advanced manufacturing solutions to work for themselves, leveraging automation, data collection, and advanced analysis to identify opportunities to enhance production efficiency. Companies across the Commonwealth have benefited from a range of resources that support these advancements. In 2023, the Additive Manufacturing & Advanced Materials (AM2) Tech Hub was launched to formalize collaboration among companies and fuel manufacturing innovation.
Headquartered in Radford and funded
through a federal Tech Hubs Strategy Development Grant, this consortium of more than 50 partners has set its sights on accelerating the growth of manufacturing in the New River Valley and across the southern part of Virginia. “We are bringing together assets and opportunities among private, public, and educational research actors, and helping to tell a bigger story,” said John Provo, executive director of Virginia Tech’s Center for Economic and Community Engagement in Outreach and International Affairs.
Even in its early stages, the AM2 Tech Hub is working to expand the workforce training already underway to develop a pipeline of talent prepared to operate and maintain future advanced factories. Existing solutions include the GO TEC talent pathway initiative introducing middle school students in the New River Valley and throughout southern Virginia to technology and engineering skill sets.
Manufacturers in the region also enjoy access to graduates of the Virginia Tech College of Engineering’s Advanced Manufacturing department. The school has been recognized as one of the top 20 institutions in the world for additive manufacturing, contributing research to advance industrial applications of metal-based additive techniques.
Elsewhere, the Virginia chapter of the Federation for Advanced Manufacturing Education program partners students at Richard Bland College in Prince George County with resources at the nearby Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing and industry partners. These college students gain hands-on experience in advanced manufacturing while completing associate’s degrees as advanced manufacturing technicians.
And in Danville, workforce development has been accelerated by the launch of
the U.S. Navy’s Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence within the State of Virginia’s Center for Manufacturing Advancement on the Danville Institute for Advanced Learning and Research campus. The center provides a platform for training a skilled additive manufacturing workforce through partnership with the Accelerated Training in Defense Manufacturing program, which provides a fast-track curriculum across key areas, including additive manufacturing.
INCREASING SAFETY FOR SERVICE MEMBERS
The U.S. Army is already putting additive manufacturing technologies to work. The U.S. Department of Defense engaged MELD Manufacturing in Christiansburg to create seamless components for tanks and other vehicles, looking to reduce the vehicles’ vulnerability to explosive devices.
To remove this weakness, the U.S. Army contracted with MELD to deliver a custom machine capable of printing metal components 20 feet by 30 feet by 12 feet in size. The resulting “Jointless Hull” machine, the world’s largest additive manufacturing apparatus, was designed to print massive metal sheets to serve as seamless tank hulls.
Emerging technologies are making it possible to work with advanced materials and even produce parts on the go. “The idea that in five or 10 years, submarines are going to go out with the ability to print a part while they’re on patrol is incredible,” Provo said.
Creating these innovative components requires innovative equipment, and this is where MELD delivers. The
company’s machinery uses additive friction stir deposition, a technique that enables printing of metal without melting it to a liquid state. This allows MELD machinery to print in metals like copper and titanium, which would otherwise be unprintable, said MELD CEO Nanci Hardwick.
Many of these materials are particularly valuable to the aerospace and space industries due to their resistance to wear, corrosion, and heat. These properties, alongside the scale of parts that MELD equipment can deliver, have prompted clients as varied as NASA, SpaceX, and Blue Origin to adopt MELD’s additive manufacturing technology to produce spacecraft components.
This equipment also provides manufacturers with a powerful competitive edge. “We’re hearing that customers printing these giant components can save up to two years of lead time,” Hardwick said. “If you just think about the rate of innovation in space and aerospace right now, who can afford to wait two years to get started on the prototype to see if it’s the direction that they want to go with an aircraft or some space component?”
Virginia manufacturers are seeing these additive manufacturing advantages. For Volvo Trucks’ New River Valley plant in Pulaski County, 3D printing capabilities have helped create assembly tools and fixtures that were previously ordered from vendors or machined in-house through a multistep process. Today, the plant uses more than 500 tools and fixtures produced through selective laser sintering (SLS), a type of 3D printing technology that uses a laser to apply heat
and pressure to powdered plastic material to form a solid structure. Through SLS, engineers can design a part, program the machine, and leave it to print in a matter of hours. In the case of 3D printing a one-piece diffuser used to clean paint atomizers, the company was able to save more than $1,000 per part.
Companies are also using additive manufacturing to achieve higher levels of precision in developing complex materials.
“Powder-based metal [additive manufacturing] has a lot of opportunity in small biomedical applications, like hip joints,” Hardwick said. “It gives you the ability to make something very tiny and control all of the geometry because you’re making the part one particle of metal powder at a time. You have a tremendous amount of control, and you can get really intricate.”
DEVELOPING FILTRATION TECHNOLOGY THROUGH ADVANCED MATERIALS
“While additive manufacturing is often focused on creating three-dimensional solid objects, our technology is focused on creating three-dimensional fibrous structures to improve filtration performance. In some applications, the product is made from multiple layers of different types of fibers,” said Vincent L. Hatcher, director of operations for Floyd County advanced materials manufacturer Hollingsworth & Vose (H&V).
Whether it’s an air filter in the home or a liquid filter in a factory or the filter
The idea that in five or 10 years, submarines are going to go out with the ability to print a part while they’re on patrol is incredible.
JOHN PROVO Executive Director, Virginia Tech Center for Economic and Community Engagement
within a health care worker’s N95 mask, high-efficiency filtration material is desired for its ability to capture more minute particulates. However, as filter media become more efficient, more energy is required to move air or liquid through the filter. This is where H&V uses advanced nanofiber manufacturing techniques to develop materials capable of increasing filtration efficiency while resolving the pressure issues.
The company operates a research and development lab and two filtration media production sites in Floyd County and is undergoing a $40 million expansion that will give it space to “push the limits in terms of new production development,” Hatcher said.
Because advanced manufacturing strategies prioritize efficiency and waste reduction, many companies see these processes as instrumental in moving manufacturing toward a more sustainable future. Companies like Monoflo International, the Winchester-based manufacturer of injection-molded reusable transport packaging, are using advanced processes to reprocess packaging scrap. The company’s dedicated reprocessing and recycling operation breaks down as much as 15 million pounds of broken or obsolete high-density polyethylene (HDPE) material each year.
Reengineering this material in-house gives the company control over material quality and provides customers with pricing stability by detaching from the volatility of the petrochemical product market. Similarly, Amcor’s facility in Wytheville develops bottles for PepsiCo that are made from up to 100% recycled content. Its investments in advanced solutions that avoid coupling unrecyclable materials in its products ensure its polyethylene terephthalate bottles are fully recyclable.
GETTING MATERIALS FROM THE SOURCE
Manufacturers aren’t just developing advanced products in Virginia —
they’re also developing essential materials that allow partners to innovate. For example, Luna Labs in Charlottesville helps government labs and companies in the defense and health care industries explore development of advanced materials and manufacturing processes. From advanced composites to specialized coatings and textiles, the company is solving defense engineering challenges for critical industries, including a contract research division funded through federal Small Business Innovation Research awards.
“The core of our company started as that research arm and funds a large part of our R&D,” said Drake Goolsby, Luna Labs’ chief commercialization officer. “We use that as a foundation for delivering solutions that match up to those government applications.”
Major manufacturers have found that a Virginia location suits their business needs. DuPont opened its Spruance plant in Chesterfield County to produce Rayon® fiber, and the facility, which remains the company’s largest in the world, now includes production lines for numerous key materials. The site is also now home to chemical manufacturer
Celanese Corporation, which recently acquired the production capabilities and assets of DuPont’s Materials and Mobility division to support the growth of its engineered materials business.
Among Virginia’s strengths in advanced manufacturing is an abundance of both building-block chemicals and specialty chemicals used in downstream manufacturing, particularly polymers, coatings, and additives like those supplied by the Evonik Corporation, a German specialty chemicals manufacturer with a plant in Hopewell and a facility in Chesterfield County. These raw materials are used as feedstock for intermediary products with many industrial, commercial, and consumer end use applications.
In Southampton County, Eastman Chemical is developing specialty polymers for use in additive manufacturing applications ranging from fibers to consumer electronics. In Halifax County, IperionX is putting the finishing touches on a facility to house the first commercialscale operation to turn titanium scrap into metal powder to produce components via additive and other advanced manufacturing processes. The facility will
help shift U.S. manufacturers away from reliance on imports of titanium sponge, the raw material used to develop titanium alloys essential for aerospace and defense production.
“Our business is about making U.S.-made, sustainable, low-cost, high-performance titanium products for critical and commercial industries,” said Taso Arima, IperionX’s managing director and CEO.
Titanium offers the highest strengthto-weight ratio of any metal, is highly corrosion resistant, and has the ability to withstand extreme temperatures. Yet the United States has no domestic titanium sponge production and has long sourced almost all of its metal from Japan, with the global supply chain dominated by China and Russia, Arima said. As U.S. manufacturers look to source more materials closer to home, advanced manufacturing is proving essential for stabilizing supply chains.
As Arima points out, advanced manufacturing materials and technologies are a “tool in the toolbox. It’s not a full method for bringing back everything. You have to have innovation across the supply chain,” he said.
3D printing, one of the most familiar applications of additive manufacturing, leverages plastics and other materials that Virginia has in abundance.
The Art and Science of Commercialization
A Conversation With Drake Goolsby
Drake Goolsby is chief commercialization officer at Luna Labs, a Charlottesville-based company that helps develop advanced technologies in biotech, advanced materials, and engineered systems for government, military, and industrial clients. VEDP Vice President of Manufacturing Sneha Atwal spoke with Goolsby about Luna Labs’ research activities.
Sneha Atwal: Can you give us a highlevel overview of Luna Labs’ mission, vision, and activities? What are problems the company is attempting to solve?
Drake Goolsby: We’re a small product development company with about 100 employees that primarily serves the defense and biotech markets. We started as a division of a larger company in 2001, and we have a strong growth path ahead, based on our recent spin-out to a private equity firm. Our strength is really taking a product from concept through development and early-stage growth. At that point, we look for external partners for further growth opportunities.
I like to say we bridge the gap between small-business agility and large-business capabilities. I’ve worked for very large companies, great companies, and many times R&D is very limited in its scope to think broadly or to quickly get through a product development pathway. We think we do both really well.
We have a contract research division funded through government Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR), and that gives us a foundation to think broadly across different challenges our government clients have. Then we can see high-potential opportunities, where a product fit matches up with a market pull opportunity, and accelerate that growth pattern. So we’re excited for our path ahead.
Atwal: Could you discuss Luna Labs’ work with materials research? What are the company’s priorities there? What has the company done that you can talk about that you’re most excited about?
Goolsby: We have three divisions — materials, biotech, and systems — but really, material science connects all three. For example, one product our biotech group is developing is a novel drug delivery platform for rare disease and vaccination. It’s a biomimicry capability using carbon nanotubes. Leveraging that into drug delivery is a novel thought, so it’s a great opportunity where we’ve been able to pull in material science and leverage it within biotech.
We have a med simulation business that has created a cool product that simulates human blood and forms realistic clots. Used in combination with an applied tourniquet or chest seal, you can train first responders and the medical community on how to properly treat bullet wounds and other wounds of that nature.
Another existing product we have under the systems group involves corrosion monitoring. It’s electrical engineering, but it features the challenge of putting samples out in corrosive environments and monitoring them over very long periods, sometimes two years, to see the performance of new coatings or new types of materials you’re trying to create. Our system accelerates that timeline to get those results in less than
We can be really efficient at solving a problem and making that solution a value-add to someone else’s large coding capabilities, or corrosion management, software, or other capabilities. We’re constantly looking at how to leverage in-market partners that have market share and are open to bringing in external innovation.
DRAKE GOOLSBY Chief Commercialization Officer, Luna Labs
six months. Those are very different products, applicable to very different markets, but the core thread of material science that weaves throughout is how we make that connection.
Atwal: Can you talk us through some strengths you see in your materials, R&D, and the commercialization side?
Goolsby: I want to emphasize how well our team collaborates across our division. Of the 100 employees at Luna Labs, about 75 are advanceddegree engineering scientists across various disciplines, and we encourage collaborative work across disciplines. That flexibility, that teamwork, allows us to think outside the box and collaborate on solving sometimes very niche challenges across a varied portfolio of projects we’re working on for that contract research.
What we’re also good at is understanding how to be a value-add to commercial partners. When a topic comes up, a good model for us is to think about how we can create a value-added component to someone
else’s system. Our model in that product development is not necessarily to be the market leader in coding or in any major global category, but how we can be really efficient at solving a problem and making that solution a value-add to someone else’s large coding capabilities, or corrosion management, software, or other capabilities. We’re constantly looking at how to leverage in-market partners that have market share and are open to bringing in external innovation. We’re flexible in our business model, and I think that’s a real strength for us.
Atwal: You see yourselves as the innovation inside the innovation. Does that sound right?
Goolsby: We think commercialization is about combining relentless determination with a whole lot of creativity. Being able to think broadly, gather the market intel, know our customer base, move fast, be efficient in product development, but understand our customers’ needs and the timing of those needs. In some cases, we need to incubate a project and a development cycle. In other cases, we need to accelerate. Being flexible and understanding where our product development potential is and matching that up with market need timing is the art of commercialization.
Atwal: Do many of your team members come from the University of Virginia (UVA)? Being in close proximity to the university, is that a benefit? How do you interact with or work with other Virginia universities?
Goolsby: The long history of Luna Labs is that it was created in 2001 to collaborate with the University of Virginia. We have another office with a large material science group down in Blacksburg near Virginia Tech. So our group in Blacksburg pulls from that talent while we pull from UVA. That’s two incredible schools with great engineering programs, as well as a biotech talent pool. It’s a large opportunity for us to always be recruiting and to keep close relationships with the students coming out of there.
Atwal: You mentioned that you have a close interface with the federal government, and you’re using some SBIR funds to stand up a part of the company. Can you tell me more about how Luna Labs interfaces with the federal government?
Goolsby: SBIR is a program that funds research and development by small businesses. It’s one of the largest public-private partnerships in the country. It’s a competitive process that gives grants to small businesses with fewer than 500 employees to support R&D needs for the U.S. government. We have a long history of being able to propose and match solutions with the
needs coming out of SBIR.
We use that as a foundation for delivering solutions to the government. In some cases, we’re creating products specifically for U.S. Department of Defense applications. We’re developing some coatings that are high potential for aerospace. The corrosion management acuity device I was describing earlier was developed for aerospace. We have another coating sealant that’s a transparent armor need for reducing delamination of windows for ground vehicles in harsh conditions. In some cases, if there’s an adjacent market for us to further develop that product to meet some other need, we will. We’ll go through that product development cycle, commercialize in that additional market, and find partners to scale it.
Atwal: What does innovation mean at a company like Luna Labs?
Goolsby: Really being able to think broadly, asking questions about why something hasn’t been solved yet, and never assuming that the answer five years ago is the answer today. That’s a trap we can fall into sometimes, where we think surely someone should have found the answer by now, and if they haven’t, it’s probably too hard. The constraints five years ago are never the constraints today. Never restricting yourself from being able to see the possibilities is what we want ingrained in our teams.
From a commercialization framework as well, you always start from where we are today and trace forward key next steps we want to take. You need to think ahead to what is a good end result for us and trace backwards. Where those two meet in the middle is the optimal action plan of what next needs to be solved.
It’s a lot like solving a jigsaw puzzle. We never just pick a random piece and try to put it in the middle of the puzzle. We create the outer frame, then trace back to the middle. Innovation and commercialization are so much alike.
Atwal: I’ve had an opportunity to spend a lot of time in Charlottesville in recent years, and there’s something special about the entrepreneurial community there, specifically around biotechnology and life sciences. I know you’re new to the Charlottesville area, but have you found it to be a supportive community?
Goolsby: Charlottesville has strong biotech, but it’s also a strong area for science and technology solutions. I think Luna Labs is positioned really well for growth and continued partnerships with Virginia-based companies.
Atwal: How does Virginia stack up to the other states you’ve lived in?
Goolsby: My wife loves history, so being able to see historical sites like Williamsburg has been a lot of fun for us. I’ve got two girls who are 13 and 10 and enjoy outdoor activities. Big cities have some advantages, but they certainly don’t have the nature Charlottesville has to offer. History, nature, and really, just gorgeous mountain views, with wineries, are hard to beat.
Being flexible and understanding where our product development potential is and matching that up with the market need timing is the art of commercialization.
DRAKE GOOLSBY
Chief Commercialization Officer, Luna Labs
Atwal: I have really enjoyed learning about what Luna Labs is up to, what problems you’re trying to solve, and what industries you’re targeting. We’re excited to have this company grow in the Central Virginia area. Drake, it’s been a pleasure.
Goolsby: Thank you so much for the opportunity.
For the full interview, visit www.vedp.org/Podcasts
A Biopharma Booster
Booming Virginia clusters provide a supply chain blueprint for increasing drug accessibility, affordability
Like his fellow Type 1 diabetics, Alec Smith took insulin every day to regulate his blood sugar. Costs to treat his condition topped $1,000 per month, most of that going to insulin, and Alec made the difficult decision to ration his insulin to save money after aging off his mother’s health insurance plan.
Rationing insulin is a delicate process for diabetics. The body’s insulin needs can fluctuate significantly due to changes in diet, exercise, stress, poor sleep, or other medications, and diabetics must constantly monitor their glucose levels even when taking insulin as directed. When a person’s blood sugar gets too high, the body goes into diabetic ketoacidosis, which releases dangerous amounts of acid into the bloodstream and, if left untreated, can result in death — as it unfortunately did for Alec Smith in 2017. His mother, Nicole Smith-Holt, told CBS News, “I think if the price of insulin in 2017 had been $35, Alec would still be alive today.”
Alec was not alone. A 2022 study from the Annals of Internal Medicine found that one in six Americans who take insulin have rationed their dosage due to cost concerns. Some brands of insulin have been in shortage multiple times since 2023, leading to congressional inquiries of major insulin producers in the country. Nearly 30 million Americans have diagnosed diabetes (Type 1 or Type 2), and more than 7 million require daily insulin.
The problem isn’t limited to insulin. Across the U.S. biopharma industry, supply chain gaps and delays and impaired coordination have led to rising consumer costs and mounting shortages. The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists counts more than 200 U.S. drug shortages, with critical medications used to treat cancer as well as sterile injectables and generic drugs among the deficiencies.
“Make no mistake, drug shortages are not a passing storm that will soon blow over,” said Allan Coukell, senior vice president
Civica Rx, Petersburg
of public policy for pharmaceutical manufacturer Civica Rx, during a 2023 congressional hearing. “After a dozen years, shortages must now be understood as a built-in and permanent outcome of our current system.”
Civica, a nonprofit generic drug company with a growing presence in the central Virginia cities of Richmond and Petersburg, is one of an increasing number of forward-thinking Virginia companies focused on making medicine like insulin more accessible — targeting shortages while making biopharmaceuticals more affordable for consumers. Across Virginia, innovation and collaboration have transformed the Commonwealth into a thriving ecosystem that’s making a difference nationally.
A BIOPHARMA SWEET SPOT IN CENTRAL VIRGINIA
The lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic were seemingly written in invisible ink. Instead of strategically stockpiling critical medicines, many U.S. manufacturers have reverted to a “just-in-time” approach, and many critical drugs and ingredients are manufactured overseas.
But over that same period, Virginia — and the Richmond-Petersburg region in particular — has emerged as a model for biopharma companies seeking to put much-needed medicines in the hands of consumers faster and cheaper.
“There really is no place in the nation this focused on advanced manufacturing,” said Robby Demeria, chief corporate affairs officer for Phlow Corp., a Richmond-based Certified B Corporation with a manufacturing facility in Petersburg. “There is significant activity. Stars are aligning.”
Phlow is focused on leveraging advanced manufacturing processes to re-image the domestic production of key starting materials and active pharmaceutical ingredients (API), an area of particular vulnerability for the United States.
Founded by scientists at Norfolk institutions Eastern Virginia Medical School and Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters, ReAlta Life Sciences, Inc., is a clinical-stage, rare disease biotech company dedicated to harnessing the power of the immune system to address life-threatening diseases.
Granules Consumer Health, a division of Indian pharmaceutical company Granules India Ltd., specializes in the manufacturing of generic drug products including acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and other over-the-counter medications. The company recently announced a 99-job expansion of its Prince William County facility.
In 2024, the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient Innovation Center, a consortium of biotechology industry leaders, found that more than 90% of the most frequently prescribed antivirals and antibiotics have no domestic API manufacturing source. Phlow has a close affiliation with another altruistic biopharma organization, the Medicines for All Institute (M4ALL) at Virginia Commonwealth University’s (VCU) College of Engineering.
Launched in 2017 with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, M4ALL is committed to
There really is no place in the nation right now this focused on advanced manufacturing. There is significant activity. Stars are aligning.
innovating efficient manufacturing processes, including API production as a means of creating more access and affordability.
“It starts with chemistry,” said Dr. Frank Gupton, M4ALL’s CEO. “If we have robust, high-yield chemical processes, then we can do a lot of things with the downstream steps and greatly simplify the processes.”
With that approach, M4ALL has led improvements to more than 20 drugs for COVID-19, HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria.
Founded by Virginia Tech researchers who were investigating diagnosis and treatments for major hospital pathogens, TECHLAB, Inc., designs, develops, and manufactures infectious disease diagnostics that are distributed worldwide.
That brings us back to Civica, the nonprofit that’s currently delivering 80-plus drugs directly to member hospital systems across the country. In 2022, Civica struck an agreement with GeneSys Biologics to manufacture and distribute three insulins at significantly lower prices than those currently available in the United States, sold at a recommended price of no more than $30 per vial and $55 for a box of five pen cartridges. The company’s new Petersburg facility has the capacity to produce about 90 million vials and 50 million prefilled syringes per year.
Rounding out the RichmondPetersburg cluster are AMPAC Fine Chemicals (AFC), a division of SK pharmteco that manufactures custom API and registered intermediates, and United States Pharmacopeia (USP), an independent scientific nonprofit that establishes quality, purity, and other standards.
The cluster is a highly coordinated, streamlined ecosystem capable of true turnkey manufacturing. In 2021, Civica announced plans to build a 140,000-sq.-ft., $140 million manufacturing facility in Petersburg. With support from this strategic partnership led by Phlow, Civica’s cutting-edge facility was designed for the manufacture of sterile injectables — converting AFC and Phlow’s API into finished medications. Soon after that announcement, AFC broke the news of its own $25 million expansion.
REWRITING THE MAP
Plot out the trade routes illustrating a medication’s journey from manufacturing facilities to a U.S. patient’s medicine cabinet, and you’ll see lots of activity flowing from East to West.
It’s not only the API that largely comes from Asia, but also the critical final step of the biopharma manufacturing process: fill-finish. This step involves dispensing the medication into a syringe or vial, as well as any needed sterilization and other final touches.
According to Demeria, the volume of generic essential medicine fill-finish work completed in the United States just recently dipped below 50%, with much of it occurring in India.
Central Virginia’s biopharma cluster is looking to not only bring these key functions stateside, but also to shore up the supply chain by building the U.S. stockpile. To that end, Phlow has partnered with the U.S. government to add millions of
doses of essential medicines to the Strategic National Stockpile, aided by a $354 million contract from the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.
One of the ways in which these companies and others are making inroads is by adopting continuous manufacturing, which involves sustained processing of raw ingredients and completion of medicines instead of manufacturing in smaller batches.
Continuous manufacturing can come with high upfront equipment costs. But it also increases yield while decreasing the waste of traditional batch manufacturing, which makes it more economically competitive.
That’s because in continuous manufacturing, testing occurs intermittently throughout more automated processes, allowing for substandard product to be removed before it’s completed.
“We’re not just creating advanced processes, we’re relooking at chemistry that hasn’t been looked at in decades,” Demeria said. “We can reduce needed steps exponentially.”
A STATEWIDE BIOPHARMA BOOM
While the Richmond-Petersburg area may be the epicenter of biopharma activity and alignment, dots are being connected across Virginia.
Just down Interstate 64, contract manufacturer Afton Scientific recently announced a $200 million expansion to its Albemarle County facility. Specializing in much-needed sterile filling of small-batch commercial and clinical trial injectables, the company has found its niche with larger manufacturers that require a high-touch approach for specialized drugs.
Founded in Waynesboro in 1991, Afton expanded to the Charlottesville area in the early 2000s and then took the approach of
“ground and pound, slow growth,” COO David Pereira said. The company also specializes in presterilized vials, a business line that began with a Johnson & Johnson partnership and then spiked during COVID-19 as drugmakers manufactured and tested potential vaccines.
With the recently announced expansion, Afton will triple its lab space, incorporate more automation, and position the company to handle the next tier of batch sizes.
“If you think you’re ahead, you’re probably two years behind,” Pereira said. “As we grow, the expansion is opening the door for a different set of clients.”
That also means Afton will need to significantly expand its workforce, hiring more engineers, chemists, and lab workers.
“We’re surrounded by young talent, smart people who want to get with a company like this and grow,” Pereira said, highlighting the company’s proximity to top universities — notably the University of Virginia (UVA) in nearby Charlottesville and James Madison University (JMU), an hour away in Harrisonburg — and community colleges.
Pereira credited the substantial resources that both Albemarle County and Virginia are providing to build a pipeline for the necessary specialized labor.
“Everything we need is here” in Virginia, he said.
Pereira and Afton only need to look north to see how this next workforce development chapter could play out. When Virginia won a $1 billion expansion at Merck’s Rockingham County facility, which produces the company’s vaccine for the human papillomavirus (HPV), workforce development initiatives were a key piece of the attraction for the global science and technology company. What emerged was an approved allocation
We’re
surrounded by young
talent, smart people who want to get with a company like this and grow.
DAVID PEREIRA COO, Afton Scientific
from the Virginia General Assembly to support talent and workforce initiatives led by neighboring JMU and Blue Ridge Community College (BRCC). Designed to establish a pipeline of biotech engineering and computer science talent that could fuel Merck’s future growth, it included:
◾ Introduction of specialized curriculum with dedicated classes and staff
◾ A robust internship program and boot camps with relevant on-site training
◾ Youth biomanufacturing camps to maximize the pipeline’s reach into K-12 education
As a result of these and a number of additional initiatives, more than 100 JMU and BRCC graduates have already been hired by Merck. Elsewhere in Virginia, VCU launched the country’s first doctorate in pharmaceutical engineering in 2019.
Last year, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced plans for a $96 million “Virginia Research Triangle” intended to foster collaboration in biotech, life sciences, and pharmaceutical manufacturing. The group initially included UVA, VCU, and Virginia Tech; Old Dominion University was added in 2024.
Elsewhere in Virginia, the Advanced Pharmaceutical Tech Hub in the
Richmond-Petersburg region was designated as one of 31 inaugural tech hubs by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration. The recognition allows the region to vie for a piece of the $70 million pie of federal grants allocated to the tech hubs.
BUILDING THE FUTURE OF BIOPHARMA
The Richmond-Petersburg cluster continues to grow. Civica is opening a 55,000-sq.-ft. laboratory testing facility in Chesterfield County’s Meadowville Technology Park. Meanwhile, Phlow and USP have completed neighboring labs in Richmond’s VA Bio+Tech Park — right beside M4ALL.
M4ALL is now working on 14 new global health projects, and will expand its already extensive capabilities to meet this new demand, thanks to an $18.7 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Phlow’s Demeria is already issuing the call for more companies to join the Richmond-Petersburg area’s effort to create a fully connected supply chain.
“We’re going to need more than the original four,” he said.
Demeria points to recent events that dramatically affected the biopharma supply chain, from Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, to Hurricane Helene’s damage, to North Carolina’s Baxter International plant, which produces critical IV and sterile fluids.
“There’s no doubt that progress has been made, beginning with the transformative work underway in central Virginia,” Demeria said. “But disruptions to our essential medicines supply chain will persist, and it will take ongoing collaboration and tenacity to safeguard America’s medicine cabinet.”
Global consumer healthcare giant Haleon plc, formerly GlaxoSmithKline plc, is one of the largest over-the-counter healthcare companies in the world. The company manufactures major consumer healthcare brands including Advil, Centrum, ChapStick, Excedrin, Robitussin, and Theraflu.
The Medicines for All Institute at Virginia Commonwealth University focuses on optimizing medicine production through innovative manufacturing techniques.
Civica Rx Hits the Ground Running in Petersburg
Nonprofit drug manufacturer gets recruitment, training boost from Virginia Talent Accelerator Program services
Nonprofit generic drug manufacturer Civica Rx, founded to address chronic generic drug shortages and high drug prices, has announced two Petersburg-area facilities in recent years. Civica turned to the Virginia Talent Accelerator Program to address the accompanying talent demands, including the need to hire more than 360 employees. The Talent Accelerator team developed detailed, industry-specific training in partnership with Brightpoint Community College and launched a full marketing campaign for the open positions, including ads on streaming services like Hulu and billboards in key locations.
Civica Rx, Petersburg
Virginia doesn’t just offer training — they bring an entire recruitment and training infrastructure. They helped us recruit workers, trained them in-house with customized materials, and even developed video and 3D animations for our unique processes. It’s like having your own dedicated workforce development agency.
KRIS WEIDLING
Chief Human Resources Officer, Civica Rx
Brightpoint Community College
WHEN JEREMY MOYER was 6 years old, he started following his dad around their 1,000-acre dairy farm in Amelia County. By the time he was 12, he was getting paid to do chores around the farm. Now, at 42, he runs the farm with his father and brother.
But his core mission at Oakmulgee Dairy Farm isn’t just to nudge his 320 cows to produce 9 million pounds of milk annually — it’s to produce that milk sustainably.
Virginia food and beverage processors drive sustainability through production practices
In other words, in a way that doesn’t harm the environment, doesn’t overtax
Oakmulgee Dairy Farm in Amelia County is partnering with Vanguard Renewables to convert cow manure into natural gas.
Dairy farmers who don’t adopt sustainable practices will deplete their land and cease to exist. Either you figure out how to farm sustainably or you won’t be around for long.
JEREMY MOYER
Co-Owner, Oakmulgee Dairy Farm
the animals, land, or those who work on it, and makes it possible for future generations to farm the land for years to come.
“Dairy farmers who don’t adopt sustainable practices will deplete their land and cease to exist,” Moyer said. “Either you figure out how to farm sustainably or you won’t be around for long.”
That’s not just a warning, it’s a terrestrial fact. Moyer doesn’t claim that his farm, which milked its first dairy cows in 1905, always put sustainability
first. But it does now. And the very process of farming sustainably — despite its steep upfront costs and increasingly complex technology — is becoming a key lynchpin to successful dairy and other food and beverage production and processing throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia.
“Most people think that sustainability is about a husband with a pitchfork, a wife, and dairy cows milked by hand,” Moyer said. “I’ll argue it’s much more complex. For example, the GPS device on my tractor [to avoid over-applying fertilizer] is more accurate than on a military-guided plane.”
Welcome to the new world of sustainability. Farmers — in Virginia and nationally — are making progress, but they have some catching up to do.
SUSTAINABILITY FEEDS PROFITABILITY
Agriculture accounts for nearly a quarter of global emissions, according to a 2024 report from McKinsey & Co. While more than 68% of farmers surveyed have adopted reduced- or no-till practices, some are going even further. About half are using sustainable variable-rate fertilizer application, and 35% are using sustainable controlled irrigation practices.
Dairy farmers continue to embrace new sustainable techniques, according to The Dairy Alliance, an industry coalition, which said the domestic dairy industry contributes less than 2% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. What’s more, in the 63 years between 1944 and 2007, dairy farming practices in the U.S. took 90% less land, 65% less water, and a 63% smaller carbon footprint to produce a gallon of milk.
Some of the most compelling steps in sustainability are taking place at Oakmulgee, which Moyer claims is the longest continuously operating privately owned dairy farm in Virginia.
“Sustainability is our No. 1 issue,” Moyer said. “The dairy business isn’t sustainable
if you aren’t making money. And you don’t make money unless you take care of your cows and the land.”
He certainly knows how to do that. But he doesn’t stop there. Family members cross-train each other on the specifics of running a sustainable dairy farm, so that if one of them faces a health issue — or even dies — other family members can pick up and keep doing it. Moyer keeps his dairy farm sustainable by:
◾ Using robotics for milking. Eight years ago, they started to make the switchover because it was getting too difficult to find and keep workers for the demanding manual milking process — and because it was becoming very taxing on his dad. “Before the robots, we had to get up at 4 a.m. to do the milking,” Moyer said. Now, he doesn’t have to wake up until 6:30 a.m.
◾ Building a tech-forward barn. This includes climate control and improved ventilation. It also has a closed-loop system where any urine or manure in the barn is recycled as fertilizer.
◾ Repurposing cow manure as an energy source. In partnership with Vanguard Renewables, cow manure will soon be mixed with food waste to create methane, which is then purified into natural gas and injected into the natural gas pipeline to the tune of more than 250,000 metric million British thermal units a year. This is not only a sustainable action, but “will ensure we’ll be able to pass a profitable farm along to the next generation,” Moyer said.
◾ Installing solar panels. The solar panels, which were mounted this past spring behind the barn on ground that was not suitable for growing crops, supply all the electricity needed for the milking barn. “It made our electric bill disappear,” Moyer said.
◾ Doing no tillage or plowing. By not disturbing the ground — except to plant off-season crops that actually feed the soil and the earthworms under it — the soil has remained fertile.
LEADING THE WAY ON DAIRY INNOVATION
Virginia dairy farmers have been at the heart of increased expansion activity over the past year — much of which could lead to a more sustainable dairy industry:
◾ Shamrock Farms, one of the largest family-owned dairy product makers in the country, announced plans to focus on local dairies as it invests $59 million to expand its manufacturing operation in Augusta County.
◾ Desi Fresh Foods, a leading U.S. producer of dahi (a drinkable South Asian yogurt), announced plans to open a new manufacturing facility in Frederick County and source a significant amount of dairy ingredients from local Virginia farmers.
◾ Homestead Creamery — which uses milk from local dairy farms to produce ice cream and eggnog — announced a $2.5 million renovation and expansion of its Franklin County production facility.
Of course, even with sustainable dairy practices, there are surprises — like the 3 a.m. wake-up call the Moyers recently received when the robotic milking system malfunctioned and Jeremy had to rush over to the barn to change the milk filter.
A couple of hours north of Oakmulgee in Orange County is another small dairy farm that is also trying to adopt sustainable practices.
Molly McWilliams runs that farm, J-Team Dairy, with her father, Jim Elgin. The farm has 200 cows, milked three times daily, and 140 tillable acres.
Except, for sustainability reasons, it’s run as a no-till farm.
“We ask a lot of our land, so we care for our land,” McWilliams said proudly. To keep the topsoil from eroding in the winter, they plant ryegrass that’s fed to the cows.
J-Team partnered with the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, the Maryland & Virginia Milk Producers Cooperative Association, and the Piedmont Environmental Council to plant more than 200 trees in a riparian buffer project that will help promote water quality in the area. The trees help to retain the soil and filter out and soak up cow manure so it doesn’t run off into the nearby Rapidan River, which feeds into the Chesapeake Bay.
McWilliams and J-Team are considering sustainable methods of actually injecting the manure into the soil so that more of the manure’s nutritional value would fertilize the crops. When manure just covers the soil, some nutritional value evaporates into the atmosphere. She’s also looking into shifting to robotic cow milkers in the future.
SEAFOOD SUSTAINABILITY
Sustainability is critical on a dairy farm, of course. But in Virginia, sustainability is increasingly being embraced by some seafood producers, too.
One Virginia company at the forefront is Matheson Oyster Co., a 3-yearold enterprise in Gloucester County that plans to plant and grow over 4 million oysters at its oyster farm over the next year. The oyster farm, each section of which stretches longer than a football field, looks something like an underwater vineyard, said owner Sarah Matheson-Harris.
That’s because they use a unique sustainable method for growing oysters. Tiny oysters are placed in special cylinder-shaped baskets that are rocked back and forth by the waves, growing a premium oyster with little equipment.
Beyond raising the oysters sustainably, Matheson-Harris said, they are also sustainably merchandised.
For example, the company refuses to use the Styrofoam packaging common among seafood companies. Instead, it uses curbside recyclable packing boxes and sustainable, biodegradable, compostable bags made from beechwood fiber.
Their ultimate goal, she said, is to renovate a larger facility on the waterfront and create a modern, sustainable coworking space with the potential of working with other companies and watermen. “We are passionate about giving good stewardship to working waterfronts,” she said.
But sustainability on the waterfront can take many forms — particularly in and around the Chesapeake Bay, where Virginia and Maryland officials are aggressively working to fix a sustainability crisis inadvertently created more than 50 years ago. While trying to improve the area’s recreational fishing climate, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries released 300,000 blue catfish into the rivers that feed into the Chesapeake Bay.
What officials didn’t realize at the time was that these catfish would ultimately adapt to almost anything. They started eating all the aquatic life in the freshwater rivers. Then, in search of even more food, they eventually swam into the saltier waters of the Chesapeake Bay and began gorging on the marine life there, too. Researchers now find stomach contents from the catfish that contain countless numbers of clams, oysters, blue crabs, rockfish, and many more of the seafood traditionally harvested from the Chesapeake Bay.
Now, said Michael Schwarz, director of the Virginia Seafood Agricultural Research and Extension Center, the whole ecosystem of the Chesapeake
Bay “is at a significant tipping point due to the ecological impact of this introduced species.”
Today, Schwarz said, there are so many blue catfish in the Chesapeake Bay system that their sheer numbers have multiplied from about 500 million pounds in 2015 to as much as 700 million pounds today.
SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH GASTRONOMY
That’s why the Commonwealth is trying to create a solution that benefits everyone. One of the most surprising things about these catfish is, due to their seafood-rich diet, their nutritional and flavor profiles are excellent.
Virginia leaders are working to create a new market for these large, tasty fish, establishing the Governor’s Blue Catfish Processing, Flash Freezing, and Infrastructure Grant Program in 2023 to help address the problem by enhancing the processing infrastructure surrounding the species. If the public got a taste for these blue catfish, it could decrease their numbers and ultimately dissuade them from entering the Chesapeake Bay, because there would then be ample food for them in the nearby rivers. The goal is to create a new, sustainable fishery to process the blue catfish.
This will take time — up to a decade, Schwarz said. But within 10 years, he said, “We should be able to turn this around to the direction of a sustainable fishery.”
Throughout the state of Virginia — whether on a dairy farm, an oyster farm, or in the waters of the Chesapeake Bay — food and beverage producers strive to maintain clean, usable land and water for the next generation.
Back at Oakmulgee, Jeremy Moyer simplifies the sustainability cycle best of all: “The more you take care of your cows,” he said, “the more they take care of you.”
Virginia’s dairy ecosystem runs the gamut from small family farms to massive multinational companies like Danone North America in Rockingham County.
Research organizations like the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (shown here) and the Virginia Seafood Agricultural Research and Extension Center are working to minimize the impact of invasive blue catfish in the Chesapeake Bay.
AMANUF CTURING
IN VIRGINIA
Virginia’s manufacturing industry spans a wide variety of products and fields, with key strengths in advanced materials, biopharma, and food and beverage processing. From major household names to contract manufacturers, hundreds of specialized manufacturers operate in the Commonwealth, providing key products to consumers and companies. These companies benefit from Virginia’s strong manufacturing culture, outstanding logistical advantages, skilled workforce, competitively priced utilities, and top-ranked business climate.
Newport News Shipbuilding
Region: Hampton Roads
Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS), a division of Fortune 500 company HII, is Virginia’s largest industrial employer and has built ships for U.S. Navy and commercial customers for nearly 140 years. NNS is the nation’s sole designer, builder, and refueler of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. Its SS United States, built in 1951, still holds the transatlantic speed record.
Carry-On Trailer
Region: Northern Neck
Carry-On Trailer, the best-selling brand of trailer in the United States, manufactures utility, aluminum, dump, cargo, and equipment trailers for residential, commercial, and recreational applications at its Westmoreland County facility.
The Virginia Distillery Company Region: Central Virginia
The Virginia Distillery Company was founded by an Irish immigrant with a passion for whisky. Virginia Distillery’s Courage & Conviction American Single Malt earned the Whisky of the Year award at the London Spirits Competition in 2023, and the company was named Distillery of the Year at the same competition.
Trex Company, Inc.
Region: Northern Shenandoah Valley
Trex Company, Inc., the world’s largest manufacturer of wood-alternative decking products, was founded in 1996 in Frederick County. Trex products are manufactured using 95% recycled and reclaimed materials, and the company estimates it has upcycled more than 5 billion pounds of waste polyethylene film since its founding.
STIHL Inc.
Region: Hampton Roads
German power tool manufacturing giant
STIHL Inc. opened its first American production facility in Virginia Beach in 1974. Today, the facility is STIHL’s largest global production site, manufacturing more than 275 model variants.
The Stone Brewing Company
Region: Greater Richmond
The Stone Brewing Company (top), one of the largest craft brewers in the United States, was founded in San Diego in 1996 and opened its 200,000-sq.-ft. Richmond facility in 2016 to serve its East Coast customers with fresh beer.
A. Smith Bowman Distillery
Region: Greater Fredericksburg
Abram Smith Bowman founded his distillery in Fairfax County in 1934, one day after the repeal of Prohibition. The company’s Spotsylvania County distillery now produces bourbon, vodka, gin, rum, and cream liqueur. Its products have won more than 100 awards in the last five years, including “World’s Best Bourbon” honors for its Isaac Bowman Port Barrel Finished and John J. Bowman Single Barrel offerings.
FasTech
Region: Southern Virginia
Danville company FasTech manufactures precision-engineered, fabricated, machined, and 3D-printed additive components for the motorsports, energy, and aerospace industries. The company began its existence using the first GEFERTEC 3D metal printing machines in the United States and has added state-of-the-art machining centers to complete the production process on site.
FDP Brakes
Region: Middle Peninsula
FDP Brakes (below) was founded in 1969 and named the OEM brake supplier for the Ford Thunderbird a year later. Founded in New Jersey, the company later relocated its headquarters to the town of Tappahannock in Essex County, where it also manufactures industry-leading brake pads and shoes.
Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company
Region: Southern Virginia
The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (above), the largest U.S. tire manufacturer, produces medium truck and aircraft tires at its Danville facility. Goodyear is the largest employer in Danville and the Southern Virginia region.
Service Center Metals
Region: Virginia’s Gateway Region
Service Center Metals produces aluminum bars, beams, rods, shapes, and tubing, which are then shipped to metal service centers across the country. The company’s Prince George County facility is the world’s largest horizontal aluminum log casting plant.
Press Glass
Region: Southern Virginia
In 2024, Polish glass fabricator Press Glass (left) announced a $155 million expansion in Henry County, the single largest investment in county history. The company manufactures glass for fabricators of windows and doors, facades, and interior glass constructions.
Amthor International Inc.
Region: Southern Virginia
Amthor International Inc. (top) is one of the world’s largest tank truck manufacturers. The company opened its first Pittsylvania County facility in 1992 and broke ground for its second facility in the county in 2024.
ActivWall Systems
Region: Southern Virginia
ActivWall Systems (bottom) in Martinsville produces custom moving walls, windows, and doors for commercial and residential applications. The company’s systems integrate the indoor and outdoor experience and have been featured in House Beautiful and on Netflix’s “Instant Dream Home.”
F.R. Drake Company
Region: Shenandoah Valley
F.R. Drake designs and manufactures food processing equipment at its Waynesboro facility. Its offerings include the world’s most popular frankfurter loading system, and the company routinely captures more than 90% of new frankfurter loader sales in the Western Hemisphere.
Aeroprobe Corporation
Region: New River Valley
The Aeroprobe Corporation (below), based in the town of Christiansburg in the New River Valley, manufactures advanced sensors and measuring devices to help clients optimize performance for race cars, spacecraft, and unmanned aerial systems.
Cadence, Inc.
Region: Shenandoah Valley
Founded as Specialty Blades in an old creamery building in downtown Staunton, Cadence (above) manufactures high-performance, custom-made cutting blades for medical and drug delivery devices.
Abbott Laboratories Region: Lynchburg Region
Abbott Laboratories’ Campbell County manufacturing plant in the town of Altavista is one of the company’s largest nutrition manufacturing plants worldwide. The facility produces liquid medical products for adults and children, including the Ensure, Pedialyte, and Similac products.
Sabra Dipping Company
Region: Greater Richmond
The Sabra Dipping Company’s Chesterfield County facility is the largest hummus production plant in the world. The plant produces all of Sabra’s hummus sold in the United States — up to 10,000 tons each month.
The Hershey Company
Region: Shenandoah Valley
The Hershey Company has operated its Hershey Chocolate of Virginia facility in Augusta County since 1982 — the same year “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” came out, a fortuitous coincidence since the company’s Reese’s Pieces candy, manufactured at the facility, was a major plot device in the movie. Hershey says the demand that resulted from the movie grew its Augusta County workforce by more than 40%.
Tyson Foods Inc.
Region: Eastern Shore, Southern Virginia
Tyson Foods Inc. operates a poultry plant in Accomack County and a fully cooked food production plant in Pittsylvania County (shown here).
Region: Roanoke Region
Wabtec Graham-White manufactures air dryers, valves, gauges, flowmeters, and braking equipment for rail freight, rail transit, truck, and bus industry customers at its Salem facility.
Wabtec Graham-White
Hitachi Energy Inc.
Region: I81-I77 Crossroads, Southern Virginia Hitachi Energy (top) manufactures power transformers at its facilities in Bland County, where it produces dry-type transformers that don’t use oil, and Halifax County (shown here), where it produces distribution and power transformers for the nation’s power grid, commercial buildings, and industrial facilities, along with traction transformers for use in railway applications.
Sumitomo Drive Technologies
Region: Hampton Roads, Shenandoah Valley Sumitomo Drive Technologies (bottom middle) manufactures gearboxes and other transmission products for leading global brands at its two Virginia facilities in Augusta County and the city of Chesapeake.
Elgin Separation Solutions
Region: Southwest Virginia Elgin Separation Solutions (bottom right) manufactures turnkey systems that have been improving operations in multiple industries for more than 100 years. The company manufactures horizontal and incline screens for use in the oil and gas, mining, coal, aggregates, minerals, rendering, dredging, water, and pipeline construction industries.
SteelFab, Inc.
Region: South Central Virginia
One of the country’s largest suppliers of fabricated industrial steel, SteelFab (above, left) opened its Virginia facility in the city of Emporia in 1991. The company started in the 1950s making ornamental handrails for residential communities.
QubicaAMF Worldwide
Region: Greater Richmond
QubicaAMF Worldwide (above, right) manufactures bowling and entertainment products at its Hanover County facility, which also serves as the company’s worldwide headquarters.
The company is the largest bowling equipment provider in the world.
Somic America, Inc.
Region: I81-I77 Crossroads
Somic America (facing page, top left) in Wythe County specializes in the engineering, design, and manufacturing of ball joints for suspension and steering systems and rotary dampers for seat and tailgate applications, serving the North American and South American markets.
Optical Cable Corporation
Region: Roanoke Region
Optical Cable Corporation (facing page, top right) is a leading manufacturer of a broad range of fiber optic and copper data communications cabling and connectivity products for harsh environment and enterprise applications. The company’s clients include mining sites, oil rigs, healthcare facilities, and all branches of the U.S. military.
Framatome North America
Region: Lynchburg Region
French nuclear energy company Framatome operates its U.S. headquarters in Lynchburg, where it also designs and manufactures components, fuel, and instrumentation and control systems for nuclear power plants. The company announced a $49 million expansion of its Lynchburg facility in 2023.
Anticipating Manufacturers’ Site Needs
Through targeted, increased investment, Virginia looks to prepare project-ready sites for manufacturing projects
If every journey begins with the first step, in Roanoke that first step looks like 40,000 square feet of lab space.
City officials are working to ensure that, in the not-too-distant future, Roanoke will boast a thriving biotech sector with deep roots and connections to the region’s educational and healthcare systems. For now, they’re starting with the BioTech Lab Project: a 40,000-sq.-ft. building retrofitted for lab space for startups; a team of ambitious community leaders to lead the way; $15.7 million in state funding, plus nearly $2 million more in municipal contributions; and a plan to open for business in 2025.
“We call this our proof-of-concept
building, but the vision for biotech in Roanoke is much bigger,” said Erin Burcham, president of the RoanokeBlacksburg Innovation Alliance, a partner in planning and managing the project. “This is a launching point for a commercialized biotech incubator.”
PREPARING FOR FUTURE INVESTMENT
Roanoke’s biotech project is one example of how Virginia’s cities, counties, and regions are preparing the land and spaces that will house tomorrow’s industry, from labs designed for tiny startups to megasites that are project-ready for manufacturing and logistical use. The key, officials say, is to make the process of relocating to (or expanding within) the Commonwealth
as smooth for business as possible.
“Manufacturers aren’t necessarily looking for everything to be up in a shiny new building to go operate in tomorrow,” said Brett Vassey, president and CEO of the Virginia Manufacturers Association. “But they are looking for sites that are ready and can be up within 12 months.”
That means sites that are prepermitted — in many cases with gas, water, and sewer lines already built in, he said. This philosophy is reflected in VEDP’s Virginia Business Ready Sites Program (VBRSP), which identifies, assesses, and improves industrial sites with at least 50 contiguous, developable acres. Recently awarded $126 million in development
Summit View Business Park in Franklin County offers ready-to-build pad sites with utilities and road infrastructure in place. Traditional Medicinals and Stik-Pak Solutions are among
grants, the program’s success in funding shovel-ready sites was one of the reasons Virginia was named America’s Top State for Business by CNBC in 2024.
Virginia is investing in site development at substantial levels, with more than $230 million in matching grants awarded in the last two years. Forty-five sites have received funding, and nearly 10,000 jobs have been announced on sites that have received VBRSP grants since the program’s inception in 2015. In 2024 alone, 23 sites representing more than 10,000 acres of developable land are receiving funding from the program.
As far as site consultant Andrew Ratchford is concerned, the money has gone to good use in Henry County’s
Manufacturers aren’t necessarily looking for everything to be up in a shiny new building to go operate in tomorrow. But they are looking for sites that are ready and can be up within 12 months.
BRETT VASSEY President and CEO, Virginia Manufacturers Association
Commonwealth Crossing Business Centre. Commonwealth Crossing received $22.2 million in VBRSP funding in 2023.
“What they’ve done there is textbook — honestly, it’s nation-leading,” he said.
He ticked off a list of amenities: sites that come graded, access roads paved, utilities installed, and a major railway line nearby with an access spur graded to the center.
Commonwealth Crossing’s developers also provided an extra building, available to all the businesses on the site, which could be used for training or hiring, meetings, or whatever other use a company might require. “That’s
the companies that have located in the park.
something special about that park I don’t see everywhere, and it goes above and beyond,” Ratchford said.
HELPING COMPANIES AVOID RISK
Taken together, the improvements and amenities at the project-ready sites relieve burdens companies often face when building new facilities. The Commonwealth Crossing developers, Ratchford said, “have done everything to get each and every one of those sites ready to go.”
Another site in nearby Pittsylvania County, Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill, isn’t far behind Commonwealth Crossing. Berry Hill received a $6 million state development grant this year.
Not all the sites at Berry Hill are graded yet, Ratchford said, which for companies “presents more opportunity for you to make it your own.”
The Mid-Atlantic Advanced Manufacturing Center (MAMaC) in Greensville County received $8.5 million in VBRSP grants this year to improve its 1,600 acres along Interstate 95 and a CSX rail line. Upper Magnolia Green in Chesterfield County received $13 million to develop its 1,700 acres that the county hopes will attract megaprojects. A couple of hours east, Coastal Virginia Commerce Park in the city of Chesapeake received $35 million in VBRSP development grants in 2024. Now 4,000 acres of flat farmland, the plot abuts the North Carolina line on U.S. 17, convenient to The Port of Virginia’s Hampton Roads facilities.
Virginia’s site characterization program categorizes sites among a range of tiers that indicate site preparedness. Tier 4 and 5 sites are considered “business ready,” meaning a motivated company can often open a facility within 12–18 months of making a site commitment. Virginia is rich in Tier 5 sites convenient to key infrastructure,
including smaller, shovel-ready sites attractive to smaller manufacturers.
Wildwood Commerce Park in Carroll County is one of those, with 100- and 25-acre sites adjacent to Interstate 77. Project Intersection, a business and industrial park in the city of Norton, home to EarthLink since August 2024, and Rich Creek Corporate Park in Patrick County are convenient to U.S. Route 58, which connects both sites to interstate highways. Ringgold East Industrial Park in Pittsylvania County has all infrastructure in place and offers Class 1 Norfolk Southern rail access.
MATCHING DIVERSE MANUFACTURERS
Virginia’s diversity of locales and properties make it an attractive option for manufacturers, said Scott Kupperman, a Chicago-area site consultant specializing in the food and beverage industry. “Virginia offers coastal areas, mountainous areas, flatlands in the middle. You’ve got a nice mix of interesting places with authenticity to them, many of which are good homes for smaller to mid-size consumer-facing brands.”
One such company, Traditional
While road infrastructure is key to inland sites, coastal sites like Fairwinds Landing in Norfolk offer the opportunity to directly leverage The Port of Virginia’s Hampton Roads facilities.
Commonwealth Crossing Business Centre in Henry County received Virginia Business Ready Sites Program funding in 2023 that helped developers get the site ready for investment.
Meadowville Technology Park in Chesterfield County, home to the LEGO Group’s new facility, offers convenient access to Interstates 95 and 295 and The Port of Virginia’s Richmond Marine Terminal, with transportation, power, telecom, and utility infrastructure in place.
Medicinals, hired Kupperman in 2019 to help it find a site for a $30 million production facility in the eastern United States. The California-based herbal tea manufacturer looked at a number of states and sites, including a property near Asheville, N.C., but ultimately was won over by what Summit View Business Park in Franklin County had to offer.
Summit View “was a great value for them in a physical setting they really, really liked. They were able to visualize a completed facility that reflected their brand,” Kupperman said.
In addition to the diverse landscape Kupperman mentioned, Virginia offers sites to match a wide range of needs that arise as technologies change and companies grow. The BioTech Lab Project in Roanoke is one example — when complete, the facility will offer labs with shared equipment, office space, an innovation studio, and event space, with the flexibility and capacity to allow for partner growth. “We designed a big lab and then broke it down into smaller labs,” said Bradley Boettcher, innovation administrator for the city. “But if a company comes in and needs more space, we’ll be able to just pop out
a wall and refinish it and accommodate somebody that’s larger.”
Run by a partnership of the Carilion Clinic, the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, and the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, the project is designed to generate jobs as well as businesses. That’s because, in addition to engaging with the university community, the project also has partnerships with other local four- and two-year colleges. Virginia Western Community College, for instance, will offer degree and certificate programs to train students for lab work, including a certificate in biotechnology that prepares workers specifically for the kinds of labs the project will house, said Marc Nelson, director of economic development for the City of Roanoke. Those students will be encouraged to continue their education path to bachelor’s or even advanced degrees in the field.
“You could start at the community college, then get a four-year degree at Radford University or Roanoke College, then do your graduate work at Virginia Tech, all in the same community,” Nelson explained. “If you wanted to be involved in the healthcare industry and biotechnology, there’s a way in through the community college that can help you get the skills you need.”
While the local education system provides a roadmap for future biotech workers, the Roanoke-Blacksburg Innovation Alliance will offer concierge assistance to the lab’s tenants. That can include anything from coaching entrepreneurs on how to form their company, to introductions to potential investors and strategies for customer discovery. Burcham said, “We are focused on bringing in all the right types of mentors and coaches and experts to align with building out the startups’ businesses.”
A SECURITY
Atrilateral security partnership to share technology and military resources is poised to benefit the Hampton Roads economy and Virginia’s defense ecosystem.
The United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom formalized the AUKUS partnership in 2021. This partnership fosters technology
exchanges between the countries in building Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine fleet.
The partnership includes an agreement for Australia to purchase up to five nuclear-powered Virginia-class submarines from the United States, along with plans for a common platform to combine and leverage
shared submarine technologies. The Commonwealth is a key part of that agreement because of the thriving maritime industry in Hampton Roads and Virginia’s leadership position in the defense and cybersecurity fields. The area is a global gateway that offers unparalleled connectivity through one of the world’s largest natural harbors at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.
The AUKUS security partnership includes an agreement for the Royal Australian Navy to purchase five Virginia-class submarines, like the
BOOST IN HAMPTON ROADS
The AUKUS partnership is poised to grow demand for Virginia-built subs
The city of Newport News is home to Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS), the largest industrial employer in Virginia. NNS is a division of HII, formerly Huntington Ingalls Industries, the largest military shipbuilding company in the United States. NNS is the United States’ sole designer, rebuilder, and refueler of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers for the U.S. Navy, and one of only two
shipyards capable of building nuclearpowered submarines. The company is also a founding member of the AUKUS Workforce Alliance, a partnership with three Australian universities dedicated to building a skilled workforce to support the agreement and strengthening Australia’s defense sector by engaging with Australian and British defense companies and potential suppliers.
Michael Lempke, president of HII’s Nuclear and Environmental Services business group and leader of the company’s Australian business efforts, called AUKUS “an unprecedented opportunity for the integration and expansion of industrial capacity” across the three nations. HII has hosted numerous Australian and British officials over the past two years as the three
USS Hawaii, from the United States.
countries determine the optimal pathway to supply Australia with nuclear subs.
A HUB FOR MARITIME AND DEFENSE
In addition to HII/NNS, Hampton Roads is home to shipbuilding facilities for major defense contractors, including BAE Systems, General Dynamics NASSCO, and Northrop Grumman Corporation. Northern Virginia is home to a similar cluster of defense companies, drawn by the proximity of the federal government and its research investments. Geopolitical issues in Ukraine and Gaza and ongoing tensions with China have driven military investments that dovetail with Virginia’s priorities around energy security and the supply chain.
Defense spending is driving other facilities in the area. In September,
Disruptive geopolitical forces have renewed the importance of defense manufacturing, the supply chain, and decarbonizing the economy. There’s nowhere else in the country where all those things intersect as well as they do in Hampton Roads.
JARED CHALK Chief Business Development Officer, Hampton Roads Alliance
In April 2024, the U.S. Naval Submarine School held its first graduation for Royal Australian Navy officers in the Submarine Officer Basic Course as part of the AUKUS security partnership.
Norwegian defense company Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace announced plans to invest $71 million to establish a new missile production facility in James City County to serve the U.S. Air Force and Navy.
“Those disruptive geopolitical forces have renewed the importance of defense manufacturing, the supply chain, and decarbonizing the economy,” said Jared Chalk, chief business development officer at the Hampton Roads Alliance (HRA). “There’s nowhere else in the country where all those things intersect as well as they do in Hampton Roads.”
Chalk also highlighted the importance of nuclear power in promoting energy security in the United States, pointing out, “We build small nuclear reactors [at NNS] — we’re just putting them on subs and sending them out into the water.”
Hampton Roads has another major advantage for defense companies — the presence of the only two North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) commands in North America, both located in the city of Norfolk. Increased international interest in the region led HRA to set up the IDEA Lab, a coworking space aimed at companies in the defense, energy, aerospace, and aviation fields, in Norfolk’s World Trade Center building.
WORKFORCE OPPORTUNITIES
One international business operating in that space is Australian maritime company QMS, which set up a training center for U.S. technicians. As part of the AUKUS agreement, QMS will establish a nondestructive testing (NDT) Center of Excellence to recruit, train, and provide experience to build the NDT workforce in the region. At press time, the company was conducting site visits to find a permanent location for the training center. In March 2024, QMS CEO Crystal Kennedy told Virginia Business the company is targeting Newport News for the location. The training will focus on the field of NDT, where stress tests do not permanently alter the item being inspected — a nuclear sub, in this case.
QMS had observed NDT workforce issues in Australia and elsewhere. Attrition to higher-paying fields like oil, gas, and mining is a problem in the industry, as is experience — many NDT technicians graduate with no on-the-job or simulation experience.
“There’s a big problem with attrition and younger workers going into industry that pays a bit more,” Kennedy said. “Turnover for NDT workers is around 30–40% in maritime defense. It’s a continual job to keep maritime workers trained so that we can effectively contribute to the continuous maintenance and the shipbuilding industry. The maritime/defense industry is unlike any other and can be one of the hardest environments to practice your trade. At the end of the day, combining
trade and ecosystem into a complete training package saves time, is efficient, and contributes to the mission.”
QMS will also focus on testing and adopting new NDT technologies, notably in the areas of augmented and virtual reality, 3D modeling, and advanced testing methods. The company will use specialized haptic-enabled gloves to enable natural interaction in a virtual maritime environment, along with 3D-printed working replicas of the NDT equipment technicians use in the field. NDT for submarines largely involves testing the strength of welds and a ship’s structure and maintaining this quality throughout the vessel’s lifetime. Because a goal of the center is robust quality testing without compromising the integrity of the ship being tested, technological advances can make a big difference in the process.
“Creating innovative new software and technologies has helped us fulfill that mission better,” Kennedy said. “Instead of throwing humans at it, we can all work together to make sure the workforce we have and the workforce we
are creating are more adept with today’s technological advancements and remain on the cutting edge of future technologies already in development.”
The kind of work-based learning Kennedy described is a priority for Virginia as it trains workers for entrylevel positions in growing fields, as well as advanced methods. Advanced Technician Workforce training programs were a key factor in propelling Virginia to the top spot in CNBC’s Top States for Business rankings in 2024. The Virginia Talent Accelerator Program, which provides bespoke training and recruitment solutions to qualified new and expanding companies, repeated in the No. 1 spot in Business Facilities’ national Customized Workforce Training rankings.
“It’s a big deal for us to work within the community and have the whole of Hampton Roads involved in what we’re doing,” Kennedy said. “There’s so much out there where we can help the defense and ship industry if we sit down as partners, much more than if we try to do it alone.”
(From left) Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, U.S. President Joe Biden, and then-British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak gave an update on the progress of the AUKUS security partnership in 2023 in San Diego. The partnership includes a planned nondestructive testing training facility that could end up in Virginia.
HITTING A LOFTY TARGET
T.R.U. Ball/AXCEL Archery uses VEDP trade programs to reach Olympians from its Amherst County home
Imagine using a bow and arrow to hit a target the size of a DVD that’s 70 meters away — the wingspan of two Boeing 737 airplanes side by side.
That’s the challenge faced by Olympic archers. Ben Summers and his family know it well. In just a couple decades, they have grown what began as a small machine shop in Amherst County, across the James River from the city of Lynchburg, into T.R.U. Ball/AXCEL Archery (AXCEL), a global leader designing and building sights, scopes, and stabilizers used by Olympic medalists and recreational archers around the world.
But prior to this year, one target remained elusive. While elite male Olympians had won many medals using AXCEL equipment, few female Olympic medalists used their equipment, and the best female archers in the world were in South Korea, whose culture and business practices were unfamiliar for the company.
“We had a lot of sponsored athletes, but if you follow Olympic archery at all, the Korean teams dominate archery. So we identified, with the help of VEDP, South Korea as our No. 1 country to really try to influence,” said Summers, one of the company’s three vice presidents.
In 2021, Summers found the tool he needed to hit the bullseye: the Virginia Leaders in Export Trade (VALET) program offered by the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP). The program provides up to $30,000 in funding but, more critically for AXCEL, its experts sighted the best targets downrange, recommending key people and companies during the COVID-19 pandemic, when meeting in person was a challenge.
“Korea had been locked down and the trade mission from Virginia went virtual — with one notable exception,” Summers said. “I was the only member of that trade delegation from Virginia to
T.R.U. Ball/AXCEL Archery, Amherst County
actually go because it was really, really difficult to get into Korea at the time. We worked collaboratively with VEDP to find the right people.”
A WELL-TIMED PIVOT
Summers’ father, Greg Summers, was a master machinist at a machine shop in downtown Lynchburg, becoming so proficient he was asked to train others. Then, at age 31 with five children he hoped might someday take over, Greg launched S&S Machine, Inc., placing a second mortgage on his home and buying a few machines. While he learned business acumen, he succeeded through perseverance. “I think it took him several months before he actually got his first job,” Ben Summers recalled.
A decade later, Summers expanded into archery by necessity. S&S Machine was winding down one of its biggest contracts, with a company that supplied nuclear fuel to the U.S. Navy for submarines and aircraft carriers. The end of that contract might mean the end of the line for 50 machinists, so the company pivoted, filling a gap in the growing archery marketplace.
Within two or three years, the archery business was flying. Part of that was shoe-leather work — the family worked hard to develop relationships with a network of dealers. Part was tactics — take aim at top tournament archers using sponsorships. “Those professionals were the leading influencers of their time. And this was before social media. They were the grassroots marketing for our products,” Ben Summers said.
The family also had a ringer: Brandon Reyes, a leading tournament archer, is Ben’s brother-in-law. “If you could get a few professional big names using your equipment and endorsing it, then that would go a long way for people who wanted to get into it as a hobby,” Summers said.
As their product line expanded, so too did their penetration of the American
marketplace. Since their first year, sales have increased more than 100-fold. Said Summers: “Anywhere that sells quality archery equipment will have our products.”
AXCEL’s growth has protected between 60 and 70 machinists, programmers, and designers in an era in which employment numbers across the industry have plunged because of computerization — one computer now does work that used to be done by five to 10 machinists. The company employs as many as 130 people in summer before peak hunting season. Its growth in archery has made that side of the business more than six times as large as the machine shop.
In 2011, doctors discovered Greg had pancreatic cancer, a diagnosis with five-year survival rates ranging between 3–16%.
Greg was fortunate. Physicians at the Johns Hopkins Hospital discovered his cancer had not spread. Still, that brush with death changed him. He had been a workaholic, someone who had not really vacationed since staring his
business in 1985. So he decided to take his first vacation.
“All of a sudden he decided that he was going to go to Europe to exhibit at an archery tournament,” Ben Summers recalled.
At that year’s World Archery Championships in Turin, Italy, Greg Summers met Korean archer Oh Jin-hyek. Months later, Oh bought an AXCEL sight, which he used to win individual gold at the 2012 London Olympics.
FINDING THE SPORT’S HEAVY HITTERS
Having gotten into the Korean roster, AXCEL looked to secure further impressive connections. Their targets included Kim Woo-jin, the first man since 1985 to win the World Archery Championships twice and who set a world record score in the 2016 Olympics. As part of Virginia’s trade mission to Korea, Kim drove three hours to meet Ben Summers, then signed a contract through 2025. Kim would go on to win
With help from VEDP’s VALET program, T.R.U. Ball/AXCEL Archery Vice President Ben Summers (left) made critical trade visits to South Korea to help secure sponsorships with elite archery teams Hyundai Steel and Hyundai Mobis.
three golds in the 2024 Paris Olympics, including the individual competition on his final arrow, defeating USA’s Brady Ellison, also sponsored by AXCEL.
VALET helped Summers meet a vice president of Hyundai Motor Group who later became vice president of the global federation that has since 1931 promoted and regulated the sport, Switzerland-based World Archery. Han Kyu-hyung of Hyundai made contact with coaches to set up meetings with that country’s elite teams, one with Hyundai Steel and the other with Hyundai Mobis, which provides parts and services to its parent company.
That led to a meeting with a leading Korean coach, who explained that coaches across Asia believed that women archers always used sights made by a Japanese maker because they were lighter — a belief that Summers showed wasn’t true. The meeting proved persuasive: archer Lim Si-hyeon won three gold medals at the Paris Olympics and her Korean teammate Jeon Hun-young one, both using AXCEL sights.
“The success of these two women helped us break a barrier,” Summers said.
AXCEL archery equipment was also used in Paris by medal-winning Paralympians. American archer Matthew Stutzman, who was born without arms, won gold
using his legs and feet to hold the bow and launch the arrow in what might have been the final competition for the 41-year-old. Also winning a medal was 17-year-old Sheetal Devi from India, that country’s youngest-ever medalist, who with her team captured a bronze. Like Stutzman, Devi was born without arms.
Convincing world-class archers to use AXCEL equipment opens up marketplaces for the broader consumer market, which includes hunters and recreational archery enthusiasts.
“The athletes are kind of doorways,” Summers said.
Thanks to a family’s determination and smart sighting by VALET, a Virginia archery business has used those doorways to go global.
Sheetal Devi made history at the 2024 Paralympics when she became India’s youngest-ever medalist while using AXCEL equipment.
I81-I77 CROSSROADS
RURAL ROOTS AND A
HIGH-TECH FUTURE
One of the major selling points for the I81-I77 Crossroads is right there in the name: connectivity. The region is also known as the Mount Rogers Regional Partnership, named after the highest mountain inside its borders (and Virginia’s), but it’s the two major interstates that have helped drive investment in the region by allowing companies quick access to national markets — the region is within a one-day truck drive of three-quarters of the U.S. population. That kind of connectivity is crucial for manufacturers, and the region’s diverse manufacturing base includes everything from food and beverage processing to innovative power systems for electric vehicles to precision parts for the world’s leading automakers. Internationally recognized companies, including General Dynamics Corporation, Hitachi Energy Inc., and PepsiCo, Inc., operate out of the region, drawn by its strategic location, strong workforce, and quality of life.
THE I81-I77 CROSSROADS OFFERS:
Emory & Henry University in Washington County, which provides four-year degrees, while Virginia Highlands Community College (home to the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center) and Wytheville Community College also serve the region
Abundant outdoor recreation opportunities that include the three highest named mountain peaks in Virginia, four state parks, and a stretch of the Appalachian Trail
A population of more than 500,000 people in the Tri-Cities area, which extends into Tennessee
The twin cities of Bristol, Va., and Bristol, Tenn.,
celebrate their vital role in the history of country music with the annual Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion. Headliners from the 2024 bill include Sam Bush, 49 Winchester, and The Wallflowers.
Fiber-reinforced polymer manufacturer Strongwell (top) celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2024, starting out as a furniture manufacturer before pivoting to structural fiberglass parts. In addition to its Bristol headquarters, the company operates a manufacturing facility in Abingdon.
The Turman Wood Group, based in the city of Galax, operates 16 companies across the western half of Virginia. Turman Hardwood Flooring (bottom), one of those subsidiaries, manufactures unfinished and prefinished hardwood floors in a number of wood species.
Higher education providers in the I81-I77 Crossroads region include Emory & Henry University (top), Wytheville Community College (bottom), and Virginia Highlands Community College.
The Mount Rogers National Recreation Area protects 200,000 acres surrounding Virginia’s highest mountain. The parcel includes 500 miles of trails and is home to one of the few populations of wild ponies remaining in the United States.
The I81-I77 Crossroads is home to numerous recreational trails, including part of New River Trail State Park and the Virginia Creeper Trail (below), both converted from abandoned railroad rights-of-way.
In the fall, the trees and mountains in the region — like this rural landscape in Washington County — turn a beautiful mix of autumn colors. Fall foliage generally peaks in mid-October in the area.
The 1927 Bristol Sessions are generally regarded as a key event in the history of country music. The Birthplace of Country Music Museum celebrates those sessions, while other stops on The Crooked Road: Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail include the Old Fiddler’s Convention in Galax (bottom) and the Southwest Virginia Cultural Center & Marketplace in Abingdon.
Economic Development Partners in Virginia
VEDP works in close partnership with local and regional economic development organizations.
In addition, VEDP regularly works with a wide network of statewide partners,
State Leadership Partners
Governor
General Assembly
Major Employment and Investment (MEI) Commission
Secretary of Commerce and Trade
Secretary of Finance
Secretary of Education
Secretary of Labor
Secretary of Transportation
Project Delivery Partners
Colleges and universities across the Commonwealth (e.g., UVA, Virginia Tech, William & Mary)
CSX, Norfolk Southern, and short-line railroads
Dominion, AEP, and other electric utilities
The Port of Virginia
Virginia Community College System
Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services
Virginia Department of Environmental Quality
Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development
Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transit
Virginia Department of Small Business and Supplier Diversity
Virginia Department of Taxation
Virginia Department of Transportation
Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation
Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission
Virginia Tourism Corporation
Policy and Programmatic Partners
GO Virginia
State Council of Higher Education for Virginia
Virginia Agribusiness Council
Virginia Association of Counties
Virginia Business Council
Virginia Business Higher Education Council
Virginia Cable Telecommunications Association, Virginia Manufacturers Association, Virginia Maritime Association, Virginia Realtors Association, and many other trade associations
Virginia Chamber of Commerce, as well as many local and regional chambers of commerce
Virginia Economic Developers Association
Virginia Farm Bureau
Virginia Municipal League
Virginia Association of Planning District Commissions
