Lehigh Valley: A Booming Life Sciences Ecosystem Right Next Door

By Mark Terry
May 26, 2023

BioBuzz’s Philadelphia region includes all of Delaware and Southern New Jersey. One booming corner of this coverage area is Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, which borders the Philadelphia suburban counties, such as Montgomery and Bucks Counties, and Lehigh and Northampton, the core counties of the Lehigh Valley. The valley is also about 80 miles out of Manhattan and 60 miles out of the Port of New York.

With more than 170 life sciences companies employing 6,577 people, Lehigh Valley companies have added 1.3 million square feet of space in the last two years.

Don Cunningham, President and CEO of the Lehigh Valley Economic Development, spoke with BioBuzz about the region and the recent activity.

“This proximity to New York and Philadelphia benefits us, and sitting right here with quick access to a third of the consumers of the United States is a huge part,” Cunningham said. “But we’re kind of our own ecosystem and our own economy that isn’t really codependent on Philly or New York. We’re not really a commuter market into those areas.”

For decades, the area was the heart of the nation’s steel and textile industry. The American steel industry largely imploded in the 1990s, with the largest steel-producing and shipbuilding company in the world, Bethlehem Steel (Bethlehem, Pa.), closing much of its business in the 1990s and dissolving completely by 2003.

“Their headquarters was here,” Cunningham said, “and their home facility was five miles along the river, 1,800 acres. We were left all of a sudden with almost one-quarter of the total land in the city of Bethlehem to be redeveloped and repurposed.”

Most of it was redeveloped for mixed-use. There were several tech centers, which eventually would house semiconductor manufacturer IQE, medical device manufacturing companies, and today, Amazon has a large facility. There are also, of course, public parks, casinos and performing arts centers.

Cunningham said, “Basically, 25 years later, 85% of that old steel land has been redeveloped and repurposed. Some of it is tech life sciences.”

Recent Life Sciences Expansion

With more than 170 life science companies in the ecosystem, there is plenty of news. Here are 4 examples:

B. Braun Medical Added 310,000 Square Feet

In late 2022, B. Braun Medical, a leader in smart infusion therapy and other pharmacy products, opened the $200 million-plus expansion of its campus near Allentown, Pa. The expansion added 310,000 square feet and is expected to bring in more than 200 jobs over the next several years. Germany-based B. Braun has operated in the Lehigh Valley since 1979, opening its Allentown plant in 1985 and adding square footage several times.

On March 7, 2023, the company unveiled B. Braun e-University, an online education platform for healthcare providers. The focus is to help improve clinical practice and patient care, offering live and virtual clinical and technical training. It hosts over 50 on-demand and microlearning video courses covering a range of clinical device technologies.

OraSure Technologies Expanded to Manufacture In-Home COVID-19 Tests

OraSure Technologies, a Bethlehem-based developer and manufacturer of point-of-care diagnostics and specimen collection devices, added 139,000 square feet of manufacturing space in October 2022 to its Bethlehem Township facility. This was to increase production of InteliSwab, the company’s COVID-19 rapid test. The expansion was expected to retain 233 existing jobs and create 177 new full-time positions.

On May 10, 2023, OraSure reported its first-quarter 2023 revenues of $155 million. It also announced three new molecular partnerships after recent deals with Quest Diagnostics and Grifols.

Olympus to Build a Distribution and Service Center in Bethlehem

Japan-headquartered Olympus Corp. has its U.S. headquarters in the Lehigh Valley. In May 2022, the company announced plans to build a microscope repair and distribution facility in Bethlehem. The center, which opened in the summer of 2022, houses 30 employees.

On May 2, 2023, the company announced the FDA had cleared its new EVIS X1 endoscopy system, as well as two compatible gastrointestinal endoscopes, the GIF-1100 GI videoscope and the CF-HA1100DL/I colonovideoscope.

Sharp Received Foreign Trade Zone Designation

In November 2022, Sharp, located in Upper Macungie Township, received a Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) designation. This allows Sharp’s clients to save time and money associated with certain contract services. It also allows the company’s clients to store and package their products by Sharp per FTZ regulations. As a result, the company, which already has about 1,300 employees in the Lehigh Valley, is expected to hire more.

Why Lehigh?

Besides accessibility to New York City and Philadelphia, as Cunningham mentioned, the Lehigh Valley is home to world-class health systems, including St. Luke’s University Health Network, Lehigh Valley Health Network, and the Lehigh Valley Cancer Institute, which is a member of the Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Alliance.

The area is noted for affordable office and industrial space, as well as access to talent. The area is Pennsylvania’s fastest-growing region for people 18-to-34 years of age and is home to 11 colleges and universities.

Cunningham notes, “We’re a coalition of employers, universities, regional organizations, local governments, and every three years we strategically evaluate what our assets are and what we can do to grow economically. And you always work off what you already have. We’re in the top 50 manufacturing centers in the country. Manufacturing is 18% of the overall economy here compared to the U.S., where it’s 12%. And we have the educational infrastructure, both the kind of shop-floor skills-training level and the higher-end research and development, engineering and scientist level. We have more employment than we did back in the days of steel because the market’s grown so much and the evolution, particularly, into medical device and medical diagnostics.”

The area is very strong in the biomanufacturing area, as well as fill-and-finish-type biopharma facilities, and medical device companies.

“I would say we’re an interesting extension of the Philadelphia market with more of a focus on production and manufacturing,” Cunningham said. “Nonetheless, we’re a budding life sciences market supported by its own ecosystem of universities and tech schools, with available land and labor between these two major East Coast cities.”