Northside brewery building to become new home of X-ray parts maker after $1M sale

The brewery closed on Dawn Street earlier this spring. (BizSense file photo)

A Northside building that in recent years has been used for making beer will soon house a very different kind of manufacturing.

The owners of Anytime Beer Co. earlier this month sold the brewery’s building at 704 Dawn St. to Ralco Medical Components Inc. for $1 million.

Anytime, formerly known as Tabol Brewing, ceased operations in the 7,900-square-foot building this spring ahead of the building’s sale, while the brewery’s owners search for a new place to continue operating.

The $1 million price tag was more than three times what Anytime paid for the property in 2017, when the brewery bought it for $287,500. The city most recently assessed the property at $625,000.

Headquartered in Milan, Italy, Ralco has been in business for over 50 years, making a part of X-ray systems called a collimator.

Ralco produces a part of X-ray devices. (Courtesy Ralco)

“(The collimator) is the imaging part. It brings in the picture of the area that needs to be X-rayed and transmits it up into an X-ray tube,” said Pia Knight, Ralco’s director of U.S. operations. “It’s basically the camera of an X-ray system.”

Knight said Ralco captures about 90% of the X-ray collimator marketplace, selling to medical device manufacturers like Siemens, Konica Minolta and Carestream Health. 

The company’s Italian headquarters services Ralco’s global clients, and about a dozen years ago it set up a U.S. headquarters just outside Sacramento, California. 

Knight said most of the company’s domestic clients are on the East Coast, which ultimately led it to look to relocate Ralco’s U.S. hub. She said the company looked at places like Newark, Delaware, and multiple cities in North Carolina before ultimately deciding on Richmond. 

“We took two and a half years to explore the East Coast,” Knight said. “It took a couple of years to determine that Richmond was our favorite spot that we visited. It just fit the type of activities and people we want to be around.”

While Ralco has a staff of over 140 in Italy, its current U.S. operation employs three people, all of whom will be relocating from Sacramento. Knight said the company will soon add two more positions in Richmond with plans to grow to 20 or 25 in the next five years. 

The former Anytime building is nearly four times the size of Ralco’s current space, Knight said, adding that it’s planning to eventually manufacture the collimators in the Northside building, pending FDA approval. Ralco is also planning to subdivide and lease out about a third of the building to a retail tenant. 

“It could be a coffee shop, it could be an ice cream shop, it could be an insurance (company),” Knight said. “It’s going to be set up where it’ll be, I think, attractive to a multitude of industries.”

Ralco is planning to complete its move in August. Knight said for her and for Ralco’s U.S. staff, the relocation is “a nice adventure both from a business aspect and a personal aspect.”

Anytime, meanwhile, is continuing its search for a new home. Brewery co-owner Travis Dise said he’s working with a real estate agent as he looks for options for Anytime. The brewery has also found bonded storage for its product and Dise said he’s working on lining up a contract brewing deal for Anytime’s recipes. 

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