Haleon, an international manufacturer of medicine, vitamins and toothpaste, will upgrade its lab in Richmond's North Side at a cost of $54 million, the company announced Monday.

Based in England, Haleon makes consumer health care products including Advil, Centrum Multivitamin and Aquafresh toothpaste. Its research and development lab on Sherwood Avenue employs 400 people.

The company said it will renovate the labs and implement artificial intelligence tools to develop products faster. It is the latest development for a budding pharmaceutical and life science industry in Richmond and Petersburg, which Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who attended Monday's announcement, called a "pharma corridor."

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Haleon chose Richmond for its investment in part because of the students graduating from local universities and the pharmaceutical workforce growing in the region.

"The talent is at the heart of it," Youngkin said.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin speaks during an event on Monday to announce an expansion of Haleon’s facilities in Richmond.

Haleon was formed in 2022 when two other pharmaceutical giants, Pfizer and GSK, spun off their consumer health care businesses, which included Pfizer's decades-old research lab on Sherwood Avenue.

Last summer, Youngkin and other representatives of the state flew to London. In a room overlooking the River Thames, Virginia officials asked Haleon to choose Richmond for its investment. Where Haleon chooses to redevelop its facilities is limited, leaving localities to fight for attention.

"We only do a few of these across the globe," said Lisa Paley, Haleon's president for North America.

Employees at the Richmond plant are responsible for researching and developing vitamins, pain medicines, and cough and cold drugs. The company spends more time than you might think considering what flavors to pair with a medicine, Paley said.

Inside the lab, the company replicated a bedroom, kitchen and bathroom so employees can visualize how patients would store and use the medicine. Haleon plans to modernize the facilities so they reflect current technology, such as lights that can be turned on by audible cues, Paley added.

Although the investment will not directly create new jobs, Haleon is growing, and Richmond's lab could grow, too, she said.

Mayor Danny Avula arrives at Monday's event to announce an expansion of Haleon’s facilities in Richmond.

The state will partner with Haleon to create a paid internship program for undergraduate- and graduate-level students at Virginia colleges. Virginia will pay half of the interns' wages during a five-year period.

Youngkin said that when students take internships during college, they often stay on full time after graduation, and the program will help keep talented students in Virginia. The governor noted that for the first time in roughly a decade, more residents are moving into Virginia than out of it. Last summer, CNBC named Virginia the top state for business for the third time in five years.

Since the pandemic, Richmond and Petersburg have become a growing destination for building and researching medicine. At Virginia Commonwealth University, Medicines for All rebuilds medicines with cheaper building blocks. Phlow Corp. received a federal contract to build a national stockpile of drug ingredients, and nonprofit drug maker Civica Inc. is working to make more affordable insulin.

Having a vibrant workforce certainly helps attract economic development, Paley said. Haleon's headquarters in the U.S. is in New Jersey, in another pharmaceutical corridor. When businesses align themselves with local governments and universities, they open the doors to economic development, Paley added.

From the Archives: A look back at Richmond schools

08-06-1979 (cutline): Antoi Harrington (left) and Robert Winthrow are friends.

In October 1954, students crowded into the new Douglas S. Freeman High School in Henrico County. The school, which cost about $1.1 million, opened the previous month and had roughly 500 high school and 500 elementary students.

In September 1961, students entered Westhampton School in Richmond. That fall, Daisy Jane Cooper became the first African-American student to integrate the junior high school; the following year, she made similar history at Thomas Jefferson High School.

In July 1968, a summer session class of journalism students worked on the yearbook, “The Sunfire,” at the Collegiate Schools in Henrico County.

In April 1955, students at Ridge School in Henrico County enjoyed their new merry-go-round. It was presented to the school by the PTA, which had collected donations for playground equipment.

In September 1967, students’ motorcycles lined the parking lot at Thomas Jefferson High School in Richmond on the first day of school.

In March 1961, Robert K. Crowell, a teacher at George Wythe High School in Richmond, held his first class on communism. The six-week course was reported to be one of the first in the country and drew national attention from newspapers and television. Crowell said his method of teaching the class was to emphasize that communism was not merely an economic system “but a way of life.”

08-31-1970 (cutline): Students wait for transfer buses at corner of Westover Hills Blvd. and Forest Hill Ave.

05-03-1979 (cutline): Pupils sit under an atop homemade wooden loft at Cary Elementary School.

08-30-1971 (cutline): Miss Susan R. McCandlish greets her fifth graders on their first day at Chimborazo School.

08-30-1971 (cutline): Mrs. Gayle Graham (right) calls roll in her fifth grade class at Lakeside Elementary School.

03-29-1971: Young student listeds to playback in reading class. The program was to be used the following fall for first graders in Richmond city schools.

04-18-1982 (cutline): Video equipment used in a visual literacy program, paid for by Title I in Richmond.

09-06-1989 (cutline): Thelma Smith, a former teacher who came to school yesterday to help, pinned bus numbers on pupils at Bellevue Elementary School.

09-03-1985 (cutline): Corey Green on bus, ready to head home after 1st day of school at John B. Cary School.

05-03-1979: John B. Cary Elementary School library.

06-16-1989 (cutline): Doing something--Patricia Lancaster, Boushall Middle School curriculum specialist, is surrounded by some of the pupils taking part in the "Becoming a Woman" program.

07-13-1979 (cutline): In Super Mint factory--Stephanie McIntosh, Becky Blum and Chris Minney (left to right) made Astonishments this week in the Superintendent's School for the Gifted.

09-08-1972: Students cross street on Forest Hill Avenue aided by crossing guard.

09-01-1970 (cutline): "It's different. It's a new experience. Everybody's trying to make it work. I think it will work." These comments by Susan Lippsitz, a new student at Thomas Jefferson High School, are reflective of those by several high and middle school students in their second day of the school term under a new court-ordered desegregation plan.

07-11-1976 (cutline): Blackwell Elementary students examine a bell in front of Treasury building in Washington D.C. The Richmond elementary school class was part of Class-on-Wheels, a summer school program. The federally financed program was designed to give disadvantaged studens the opportunity to travel by bus throughout Virginia.

09-01-1970 (cutline): Students leave a city school bus at Thompson Middle School, where some of them are to board a Virginia Transit Co. bus taking them to Maymont School. Thompson, in the annexed area on Forest Hill Avenue, and Maymont, near Byrd Park, are paired under the city's court-ordered desegregation plan. Some confusion yesterday about busing students to Thompson and then to Maymont was alleviated this morning through a new, direct VTC bus schedule.

10-02-1975 (cutline): Counselor Libby Hoffman uses pictures, recorded story to teach 'self worth.'

05-14-1971 (cutline): Mr. J.C. Binford with his 11th grade American History Class. This was one of the largest classes at George Wythe.