L’Oréal opened its North America Research & Innovation Center in Clark, New Jersey, with a $160 million investment. Manufacturing Dive reported the opening on 6 March 2025. More than 600 scientists, engineers and researchers work at the approximately 250,000-square-foot facility, supporting brands including Maybelline, CeraVe, Redken and Kiehl’s.
Laboratories, consumer testing and scale-up
The 27 February opening announcement describes a 26,000-square-foot modular laboratory, a consumer centre accommodating up to 400 people daily and an on-site miniature factory. These facilities support formulation development, product testing and preparation for full-scale manufacturing. The consumer figure is a stated daily accommodation capability.
- Modular laboratories for formulation research.
- A consumer centre for testing and co-creation.
- A miniature factory for scaling final formulations.
From the original project to the completed centre
L’Oréal’s 27 September 2022 project announcement described a $140 million property development replacing facilities occupied for more than six decades. It proposed bringing over 550 North American research employees under one roof, from advanced research to evaluation and product development. The opening account records employees arriving from mid-2023 and full operations beginning in February 2025. The earlier property estimate and the later overall investment figure belong to their respective announcements.
Formulation research with IBM
In a separate announcement on 16 January 2025, IBM and L’Oréal described plans for a custom artificial-intelligence foundation model using formulation and component data. The intended tasks include developing new formulas, reformulating existing products and optimising manufacturing scale-up. IBM Consulting would also help redesign the formulation-discovery process. The collaboration is a research programme, with no reported performance result for the newly opened Clark centre.
Company and contacts
L’Oréal. The official U.S. corporate page, checked on 6 October 2026, lists headquarters telephone +1 (212) 818-1500. This contact reference identifies the headquarters separately from the Clark research facilities.
