PRINCO, LLC Celebrates Grand Opening and Ribbon Cutting Event

Domestic partnerships and diverse manufacturing offer opportunities to mitigate risk and build stronger local economies.

On April 5, Premier was excited to celebrate a grand opening and ribbon cutting event for PRINCO, LLC., a new joint venture established to manufacture incontinence products in Norfolk, VA. This latest joint venture offers:

• Sustainable and secure production of vital domestically made healthcare products
• The creation of approximately 284 jobs
• Less dependence on unpredictable markets
• Support for more than 4,400 hospitals and health systems and other providers in Premier’s customer portfolio

From The Virginian-Pilot who covered the grand opening event:

Michael Alkire has a passion to reshore manufacturing, he told the crowd of over 100 at the Princo facility. Alkire is the President and CEO of Premier, and a graduate of Firestone High School in Akron — the founding city of the tire company of the same name. Roughly 30,000 families in the city, once known as the Rubber Capital of the World, relied on the industry that lost many jobs in the late 1970s.

The impacts of a lost industrial base can be found in how vulnerable the U.S. population became during the pandemic as the production of healthcare products had been shipped overseas, according to Alkire.

“We were caught flat-footed and we actually unnecessarily exposed our caregivers to the virus when we didn’t have the kind of PPE that was necessary,” he said. “We were way to dependent and way too reliant (on) Southeast Asia manufacturing,” primarily China.

Princo is a joint venture among Charlotte, North Carolina-based Premier, Inc., a healthcare alliance of hospitals and providers; Caretrust LLC, a firm that helps bring health products to market; and Vario Labs LLC, a subsidiary of Premium PPE of Virginia Beach, a PPE manufacturer. The companies are investing nearly $24 million in the project.

Watch this video for full remarks from the PRINCO grand opening event speakers, including Mike Alkire, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin and other distinguished leaders.

Premier is continuously building on its commitment, in collaboration with our members, to create more domestic options – supporting jobs creation for local economies and strong partnerships to mitigate supply chain risks, product shortages and disruptions.

For more on this topic:

• See below photo highlights from the PRINCO grand opening celebration.
• See how Premier's S2S Global is working to create greater diversity in sourcing products, along with long-term resiliency.
• Learn more about Premier and our members’ efforts to build a more resilient supply chain.