Amway Corp. is expanding the Buena Park operations of its Nutrilite supplements brand with a $42 million investment for new manufacturing and research facilities.
Nutrilite, which makes vitamins, minerals and other health supplement products, notched about $5 billion in sales last year and accounted for roughly 45% of its Ada, Mich.-based parent’s total sales of $11.8 billion.
It makes about 15 billion tablets and capsules a year and is known as the “world’s No. 1 selling vitamins and dietary supplements brand,” according to market research firm Euromonitor International Ltd.
Nutrilite has about 680 employees at its Buena Park campus, a 22-acre spread on Beach Boulevard about a mile and a half north of The Source, a retail and entertainment project currently undergoing construction.
The local campus also houses quality assurance labs and the Center for Optimal Health, the international headquarters of the Nutrilite Health Institute education center, which opened in 2006.
The workforce is “part of our more than 900 scientists, engineers and technical professionals who work in 75 R&D and quality assurance labs worldwide,” said Manager of Brand Experience Johanna Westerhuis.
The expansion plans here include a new granulation facility for tablet manufacturing, pilot laboratories, and a two-story office building. The construction component has been completed, but Nutrilite said the plant is expected to take several months for product testing, and won’t begin to churn out products for the market until next year.
The company is set to have a grand opening of the new additions to the campus in coming weeks.
Amway’s investment into Nutrilite in Orange County is part of its global expansion initiative worth more than $330 million. The direct-sales company plans similar investments at four sites in the U.S.—which collectively are expected to cost about $200 million—and one each in India, Vietnam and China.
The first of the projects was completed last year when Amway added a 120,000-square-foot plant at its headquarters in Michigan to be used for making powder products for its Nutrilite line. The development cost about $24 million and created about 50 jobs in the area.
Other ongoing constructions include a $50 million project in Quincy, Wash., where Amway is adding a plant for making botanical concentrates.
Amway spent $100 million to build its first manufacturing plant in India; $25 million in its second plant in Vietnam; and $10 million in a research center in Wuxi, China. Each of the projects is expected to be completed next year.
Nutrilite was founded in 1934 by Carl Rehnborg, who began his research in the late 1920s at a one-room lab on Balboa Island. That was after his 12-year stint in China as a Colgate salesperson, during which he found connections between people’s health and nutrients. The business moved to Buena Park in 1946.
Jay Van Andel and Rich DeVos, who were top Nutrilite products distributors at the time, founded Amway in 1959, and in 1972 acquired a controlling interest in the company. Amway purchased the remaining stake in Nutrilite in 1994.
Amway, now a unit of holding company Alticor Inc., is one of the largest private companies in the U.S., with about 21,000 workers. Nutrilite currently is headed by Sam Rehnborg, son of the late founder. The younger Rehnborg also serves as president of the Nutrilite Health Institute.
