Wilson plant to nearly double; R&D consolidates at Nutley campus

Reckitt Benckiser Group, the British maker of Mucinex, Lysol and Move Free supplements, is roughly doubling its spending at a North Carolina plant it acquired two years ago and consolidating its U.S. research operations at a New Jersey campus.

The company said Wednesday it plans to invest about $400 million over the next four years in the United States. The new commitment builds on a $200 million purchase in 2024 of a factory in Wilson, N.C., which had previously produced some of the cough-and-cold medicines now being brought onshore from plants in Mexico and the United Kingdom.

“We’re investing now to support the next phase of growth for our U.S. business, which remains a key market for us and one where we see strong long-term potential,” said Jérôme Lemaire, Reckitt’s president of North America.

Under the expansion, Reckitt will add 234,000 square feet to the 310,000-square-foot Wilson facility. When the work is complete, the Wilson plant will become Reckitt’s largest over-the-counter manufacturing site in the U.S. and will produce more than 80% of its Mucinex products domestically, the company said. Capacity for Mucinex tablets and liquids, as well as for the Move Free joint-health supplement, will grow alongside the physical expansion.

Beyond manufacturing, Reckitt is consolidating its commercial and research-and-development operations onto a single campus in Nutley, N.J. The company moved its North American headquarters about 15 miles east to Nutley from Parsippany in January and now plans to relocate research teams focused on germ-killing products such as Lysol from nearby Montvale to the same site. A new science-and-innovation center will be built adjacent to the headquarters, with the goal of compressing the timeline from product concept to store shelf.

North America accounted for about 23% of Reckitt’s core net revenue in the first half of this year, compared with 33% from Europe and 44% from emerging markets such as China, India and Brazil, the company has reported.

The investment comes as more companies have sought to brace their supply chains against disruptions such as extreme weather, shipping delays and factory shutdowns since the Covid-19 pandemic, including by manufacturing goods closer to consumers. The Trump administration has also pushed for businesses to manufacture more goods in the U.S., including by imposing hefty tariffs on imports.

Justin Kistler, a supply-chain management professor at the University of Tennessee, said distributed manufacturing allows companies to respond to shifts that vary by region.

“Having plants throughout the world allows [companies] to respond more rapidly to more localized or regional needs than just having one base in one country,” Kistler said.

He pointed to the unpredictability of U.S. cold and flu seasons as a concrete example. If the season “arrives three, four weeks earlier in the U.S. this year than it did in prior years, if we’re only solely producing in Europe, getting that product produced and then onto a ship, we miss the boat,” he said. “Our competitors beat us to it in terms of product availability.”

The $400 million figure represents planned investment over the next four years and adds to the $200 million commitment the company made in 2024.