Ally Nutra to open supplement manufacturing business in Dover

December 26, 2024 2

DOVER – A new pharmaceutical and supplement company is headed for Kent County this holiday season and preparing to support other businesses along with its own.

Ally Nutra is a business-to-business company that offers supplement brands one convenient place to handle branding, packaging and manufacturing needs. Right now, the company is leasing a 20,000 square-foot warehouse at 631 Ridgely St. in Dover’s Salisbury Road Business Park and its leaders have already invested $1 million in equipment and building materials to retrofit the warehouse with more needed for future inventory.

The goal, as explained by Ally Nutra’s CEO Dasi Lin, is to offer a one-stop shop for companies developing vitamins, medicines and supplements, no matter where the company’s home base may be. That includes brand consultation as well as lab testing for the finished product.

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“Many new entrepreneurs don’t have a custom formula, either, or don’t know how to make the product they’ve dreamed about,” Lin told the Delaware Business Times. “Sometimes, they need help to even register their trademarks and do the packaging, the design and the website. We’re going to be here for all of that. What we can do is help them from the beginning. We solve this pain point by having everything in house.”

In Dover, Ally Nutra plans to hire for 50 new jobs, while Lin and other executives hope to grow the company to a much larger facility in the near future. Just this month, they visited a 170,000 square-foot facility in Wyoming they may be interested in purchasing for their expansion. The plan is to diversify what the company could manufacture to include herbal supplements, as well as supplements to over-the-counter medications. That could result in 150 jobs at the yet-to-be determined future location, with positions ranging from food scientists, flavor profile specialists, packers, lab associated roles, logistics and more.

Ally Nutra General Manager Erasto Zenil told DBT that the company is looking to secure certifications in gross manufacturing products from the National Sanitation Foundation and IOS-7 which is often required in order to safely manufacture pharmaceutical products.

“Most over the counter medication is created in an IOS-7 room. In other words – you don’t want the second-best surgeon doing work on you,” Zenil said. “You want the best surgeon working on you and that’s what we intend on doing in that IOS-7 is offering the best we possibly can so we can create the different supplements and pharmaceutical products for other businesses.”

Business development doesn’t stop at just the investment and necessary approvals or certifications, Lin added. They already have several prospective business clients to help jump start the business when it opens.

A veteran of the supplement industry, Lin said he sees a lot of room for opportunity in the United States.

“I’m Chinese and I know that a lot of Chinese are interested in American supplements because we do have stricter regulations on food, but we have faith in American supplements,” Lin told DBT confidently. “I saw the demand with American manufacturing; we already have one business looking to us. I believe that it’s going to be a very big trend in the very near future. The business makes sense.”

As they get their footing in central Delaware, supportive leaders in the area helped make their dreams a reality, like Kent Economic Partnership Executive Director Linda Parkowski work helps attract businesses to the area and retain them through a variety of methods.

“Ally Nutra is one I think we should keep an eye on,” she told DBT about the new business.

Support from Parkowski and others worked in more ways than one – Lin said it helped the company want to stay in the area permanently.

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“It’s incredible. In the beginning, my plan was to make this temporary because we want to start here and then grow enough so we can develop elsewhere, but you guys have changed our minds. The biggest challenge I expect to face is to get talent, but we’d love to stay and grow here in Delaware,” Lin told DBT.