April 27, 2023 Lehigh Valley, PA: The Manufacturing Hub for F&B

The former Rustbelt community is seeing a surge in manufacturing, particularly within its food & beverage and pet processing sectors.

The Lehigh Valley region, PA, has seen its manufacturing sector play an outstanding role in its economy–producing an output of $8.4 billion. One of the Lehigh Valley’s leading sectors, F&B comprises 112 business locations where 6,736 work. From Coca Cola to Just Born, industry leaders have chosen the Lehigh Valley to do business because of its workforce talent, proximity to a third of the population within a day’s drive and short supply chains.

Some crowd favorite snacks are proud to call Lehigh Valley their home, including Pipcorn, Stuffed Puffs, ROAR and Honey Stinger; this is thanks to manufacturing entrepreneur Rich Thompson, former CEO of Freshpet who has spent the last five years recruiting innovative food, beverage and pet food companies. Because of this, Factory LLC, a business accelerator, has unveiled a 75,000-square-foot production facility, dubbed Factory Manufacturing LLC, that will make products for its growing product base and products contracted by companies unaffiliated with Factory.

One of the reason industry giants such as these choose Lehigh Valley is because of its workforce growth.  When it comes to employment growth among beverage, food and pet food manufacturers, Lehigh Valley has outperformed the nation over the last five years. The Lehigh Valley’s F&B sector grew at a rate of 6.7% versus a national annualized rate growth of 1.7%.

The region is home to 11 colleges and universities and three technical schools training the future workforce and driving innovation. Northampton Community College, for example, helped Bakerly/Norac Foods, a French maker of baked pasta and frozen desserts, adapt its European production to its new facility in the Lehigh Valley.

The region is well-positioned for continued growth in this sector thanks to the reduction of Pennsylvania’s corporate net income tax. Furthermore, in 2022, Lehigh Valley ranked among the Top 5 regions in the Northeast in terms of economic development projects completed in 2021 and No. 2 nationwide among regions with a population size between 200,000 and 1 million. In terms of accessibility, Lehigh Valley is a short drive (1.5 hours) from Philadelphia, New York City and Port of Bayonne, NJ – making it an ideal destination for product distribution and shipping of raw materials to be transformed into F&B products.

Some recent food and beverage companies who have been able to take advantage of what Lehigh Valley has to offer include Spot & Tango pet food company and Suncup Juice. And as the region promotes more manufacturers to migrate, they also encourage the growth of existing ones such as Freshpet, and SunOpta.

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