Pharmavite LLC

What kind of company is Pharmavite?

Pharmavite is a US dietary supplement manufacturer owning Nature Made and four other health brands, operating as a subsidiary of Japan's Otsuka Pharmaceutical.

Is Pharmavite a public company?

No. It is private and wholly owned by Otsuka Pharmaceutical. The ultimate parent, Otsuka Holdings, trades on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (4578).

Who owns Pharmavite?

Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. has owned Pharmavite since acquiring it in 1989. Otsuka is part of the Otsuka Holdings group.

Where is Pharmavite headquartered?

At 8531 Fallbrook Avenue, West Hills, California, in Los Angeles, with manufacturing in California and New Albany, Ohio.

How many brands does Pharmavite own?

Five: Nature Made, Nurish by Nature Made, Wellblends, Equelle, and Bonafide Health.

How many employees does Pharmavite have?

Approximately 2,000 in the United States, producing more than 30 billion products per year.

Barry Pressman, a pharmacist, and Henry Burdick founded Pharmavite in Los Angeles in 1971, convinced that nutritional supplements offered a better route to long-term health than prescription drugs. The Nature Made label was created in 1972 and reached drugstore shelves in 1975.

The company joined the Council for Responsible Nutrition in 1981, anchoring its identity in industry standards, and Nature Made later became the first national vitamin brand to earn broad USP verification. In 1980 the brand launched in Japan, beginning the relationship that led Otsuka Pharmaceutical to acquire Pharmavite in 1989.

Under Otsuka the company scaled manufacturing and distribution until Nature Made became the top-selling vitamin brand in the US. Headquarters moved to Mission Hills in 1995 and to the current West Hills campus in 2019.

The modern era brought portfolio expansion beyond the flagship: Equelle for menopause relief in 2019, the Nurish personalized subscription in 2020, the Wellblends condition-specific line in 2022, the acquisition of Bonafide Health in 2023, and a new production facility in New Albany, Ohio, opened in 2025 to expand capacity beyond California.

Pharmavite's verifiable credentials are quality-based rather than environmental: broad USP Verified status across the Nature Made line is the industry's strictest third-party purity mark. No B Corp or equivalent certification is held.

Parent-level ESG reporting flows through Otsuka Holdings' sustainability disclosures, covering manufacturing footprint, packaging, and responsible sourcing rather than brand-level certifications.

Nature Made holds the strongest third-party credential in the category as the first national vitamin brand with broad USP verification, and it consistently leads pharmacist recommendation surveys in vitamin categories. Wellblends won Otsuka's Global Excellence in Marketing Award in 2022.

Pharmavite's record is comparatively clean. A 2016 voluntary recall of certain Nature Made gummy products over potential Salmonella risk was handled through standard FDA procedures. As with all supplement makers, the company operates without FDA pre-market approval and relies on USP verification and its own quality systems for credibility.