When the British pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca announced in July that they would be investing $50 billion in the United States in research and development for a new generation of medicines, they announced Virginia would be home to a “new multi-billion dollar drug substance manufacturing centre focused on chronic diseases.”
On a sunny October 9 afternoon, company officials and federal, state, and local leaders broke ground on a $4.5 billion project to build two facilities on land being developed by Albemarle County for economic development purposes.
“Back in July, not that long ago, we had a plan,” said Pam Cheng, executive vice president of global operations, IT and the chief sustainability officer for AstraZeneca.
“We announced a plan to build a state of the art manufacturing facility that would deliver life saving medicines to patients not only in America, but also beyond globally,” she said. “And today, we are standing here today, together, making that vision, turning that vision into reality.”
One phrase peppered throughout the hour-long ceremony is “Virginia speed” as Governor Glenn Youngkin and others emphasized the need to streamline regulations to allow business decisions to be made quickly.
“I’ve already told my engineering team after this opening, we are going to truly run Virginia speed on engineering design, breaking ground and getting this facility up, making medicines by 2029, 2030,” Cheng said.
Albemarle was represented at the ceremony by Jim Andrews, the Samuel Miller representative on the Board of Supervisors. Andrews and his colleagues voted in May 2023 to authorize county officials to move forward with the purchase of 462 acres around Rivanna Station for what at the time was envisioned as an “Intelligence Community Innovation Acceleration Campus.”
Albemarle has since rezoned a portion of the land and is using a $9.7 million grant from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership to ready it for a tenant. The whole initiative goes by the name “Rivanna Futures.”
“The defense and intelligence sector generates more than 1.2 billion in economic impact with Rivanna Station as an anchor,” Andrews said. “With our adopted Economic Development Strategic Plan, which also focuses on biotechnology, Albemarle County saw Rivanna Futures as a chance to attract a compatible neighbor for Rivanna Station.”
In all, AstraZeneca plans two manufacturing facilities at the site with one to produce medicines for chronic diseases and the other specifically for what a press release calls “antibody-drug conjugates” which are intended to attack cancer cells with fewer side effects than treatments like chemotherapy.
John McGuire, elected last November to represent Virginia’s 5th District in the House of Representatives, said the new center is a boon to the overall district.
“As I campaigned here for Congress, all around these 24 counties, almost 800,000 people, I saw a lot of abandoned warehouses and factories where, after [the North American Free Trade Agreement], 95,000 businesses left the United States”, McGuire said. “I’m so glad to see companies across the country and across the world investing in Virginia and in the 5th congressional district so we can all have a better future.”
Another representative from the federal government was Dr. Mehmet Oz, a television personality also known as Dr. Oz. He’s been the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) since April.
“There’s no question there’s overwhelming numbers of studies now that show a reduction in the chronic illnesses that plague our people, a dramatic reduction in issues ranging from kidney health to liver health to heart health to brain health,” said Dr. Oz.
AstraZeneca is eligible for up to $191.3 million in grants authorized by the General Assembly under the Major Employment and Investment Approval Commission. The project could also receive funding from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund.
Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade Juan Pablo Segura said AstraZeneca’s investment is the result of a lot of planning and partnership building to seek investment in the pharmaceutical sector.
“Under this governor’s leadership, we’ve invested more than $120 million out of the general fund in the life sciences over the last two budget cycles,” Segura said.
Governor Glenn Youngkin thanked AstraZeneca for their efforts to save lives through advanced medicine and for locating in Virginia.
“Thank you for the values of your extraordinary company and thank you for bringing those values here in such a meaningful way,” Youngkin said. “Now, to be clear, the meaningful way is a four and a half billion dollar investment right here.”
Making the pitch
Youngkin met with Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca’s CEO, on a trade mission to the United Kingdom.
“When Pascal and I first met, we sat in their conference room in London and we had a very heartfelt conversation about AstraZeneca’s vision,” Youngkin said. “And he shared with me the vision to reach $80 billion in sales by 2030. He shared with me the vision to build manufacturing in the United States that would not only fulfill all the demand in the United States, but be able to export beyond.”
Youngkin made the pitch for Virginia and said the negotiations to get to this point were done rapidly and said moving fast to get the two factories up and running could make a difference in saving lives. He said the Virginia Partnership for Economic Development has been working to prepare sites across the state to be ready for projects like this one.
“I love the fact that when Pascal and team said, we’re coming to Virginia and we’ll decide where we’re going to go after we announce that, and then we had multiple sites around the state that we could show them the site readiness investment,” Youngkin said.
Youngkin said the site will be the epicenter of what he called a “pharmaceutical manufacturing district” that will span from Richmond to Rockingham County.
Pascal Soriot said he first visited the Rivanna Futures land two months ago.
“A bit more than two months ago, I came here as we were selecting a site, and I came to this place and immediately fell in love with this site,” Soriot said. “A beautiful site. I love trees, many trees here. And I looked at it and I thought, there’s also enough space for expansion so we can continue building here.”
Soriot said AstraZeneca employees 25,000 people across the world including a research and development site in Gaithersburg, Maryland. They’re also building a new center in Boston’s Kendall Square. He had more specifics about what will take place at the Albemarle site.
“Here we will actually produce what we call APIs, which is the ingredients, the active material in our products, in our, in our medicines,” Soriot said. “And this site will be dedicated to a range of metabolic and weight management products we have.”
Other medicines will be for severe hypertension and for blood pressure control. Soriot also had more to say about “antibody drug conjugates.”
“Antibody drug conjugate is a complicated world, but essentially targeted chemotherapy,” Soriot said. “So new generation of products that actually deliver smart chemotherapy, deliver it at the site of the cancer, to the cancer cells and of course avoids the side effects that you can imagine from traditional chemotherapy. This is part of the future of cancer care.”
Soriot said he appreciated how fast Virginia moved to work with his company and added that there would be around 3,000 jobs created during construction.
Now, let’s turn to you.
What questions do you have about this project? I’ll be doing a follow-up at some time in the future and want to know what you want to know.
Before you go: The time to write and conduct research for this article is covered by paid subscribers to Charlottesville Community Engagement. In fact, this particular installment comes from the October 9, 2025 edition of the program. To ensure this research can be sustained, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or contributing monthly through Patreon.
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This story originally went out with the incorrect location for one of AstraZeneca’s research and development locations. That’s in Gaithersburg, Maryland and not Gettysburg, Maryland. I regret the error.