Former Lynchburg Chapstick factory sells for $1.9M

A 218,818-square-foot industrial property in Lynchburg where Chapstick was once manufactured has sold for $1.9 million, Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer said.

Valley Properties purchased the industrial/manufacturing building, located at 1000 Robins Road, from KDC/One as an investment. KDC/One, a global contract manufacturer of personal beauty and home care items based in Canada, announced in 2022 that it would close the location, where as many as 675 full- and part-time employees worked, by the end of 2023, according to The News & Advance.

Norman K. Moon Jr. and Thacher Jennings, both of Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer, handled sale negotiations on behalf of the seller.

Chapstick, a lip balm created by Lynchburg pharmacist Charles Browne Fleet in the 1890s, was at one point manufactured in the building, Moon told Virginia Business. Fleet sold the Chapstick formula, and rights to it, to his friend John Morton for $5 in 1912, according to a company history. Morton revamped the product, and created the Morton Manufacturing Co., which produced Chapstick in Lynchburg until 1963, when it was bought by Richmond-based A.H. Robins Co. A Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company, Robins went bankrupt in the 1980s amid thousands of lawsuits over its Dalkon Shield birth control device and was acquired by American Home Products. That company in turn became Wyeth, which was acquired by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer in in 2009 for $68 billion.