Eli Lilly’s road to Pennsylvania, details of new $3.5B plant, celebrated in the Lehigh Valley
Challenges remain in fulfilling the vision of the public-private Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp.
But at its annual meeting Tuesday in Bethlehem, there was so much to celebrate that Gov. Josh Shapiro took part, along with a senior executive of the pharmaceutical company behind Pennsylvania’s largest-ever life sciences economic development project.
“Our mission is lofty but simple. It’s for everyone to have a good paying job in a safe community with quality schools, health care, and neighborhoods regardless of their skills or socioeconomic status,” LVEDC President and CEO Don Cunningham told the standing-room-only crowd gathered in the ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks for the event.
Jobs were front and center as the event highlighted Eli Lilly & Co.’s $3.5 billion investment announced in January for Lehigh County’s Upper Macungie Township. Daniel VonDielingen, the international drugmaker’s senior vice president for global expansion, pulled back the curtain on what’s planned inside the new plant. It’s eyed for completion in 2031 and will employ around 850 people, on top of 2,000 construction jobs.
On a broader scale, the annual gathering offered a chance to celebrate the Lehigh Valley reclaiming the No. 1 ranking among mid-size regions in Site Selection Magazine’s annual economic development rankings that were just announced. It’s the second time in three years that the region has held the distinction.
“The Lehigh Valley has been a leader in our economic growth,” Shapiro said during his remarks that closed the two-hour gathering. “We’re building new industrial sites that will host factories and labs and power plants. We’re improving our main streets and supporting the small businesses that line them.”
“And on my watch, we have achieved a record amount of economic growth,” the governor continued about the Lehigh Valley alone. “Consider this for a moment: Over the last three years, we have worked collaboratively with the private sector to create 22,000 new jobs and secure $40.4 billion in private sector investment.”
Shapiro name-dropped a few of those investors, like Ireland-based Kerry Group creating 61 jobs in a new coffee-roasting and extraction operation in Hanover Township, Northampton County, and Schless Bottles bringing nearly 100 new jobs to Allentown from New Jersey.
“And of course Eli Lilly & Co. who are setting up shop here in this community, making the largest investment in life sciences not in Lehigh Valley history but in Pennsylvania history, right here in the Valley,” he continued.
Eli Lilly’s Upper Macungie facility will be a drug product plant, the company’s VonDielingen said. Workers there will take a drug substance manufactured elsewhere and formulate it into its finished dosage form, complete with medical device for ease of consumer use.
“The facility itself will manufacture the next generation weight loss therapies,” VonDielingen said. He went on to describe the automation in the new plant’s vertical warehouse “as a force multiplier.”
“We will still have 850 jobs here,” VonDielingen said. “But instead of paying our Lilly employees and our resources here to move material with a pallet jack and do repetitive tasks, our automation and technology does that for us.
“The type of employee we’re looking for is one that will help us maintain and troubleshoot that automation and technology. It’s really a force multiplier for us to maximize our effectiveness and efficiency of making medicine.”
About half of the jobs will be for people with an associate’s degree, and nearby Lehigh Carbon Community College is ramping up programs to help prepare students to find work there, said Ann Bieber, college president and an outgoing LVEDC board member.
Ben Kirshner, in Shapiro’s Office of Transformation & Opportunity, described 18 months of behind-the-scenes work that helped bring Eli Lilly to the Lehigh Valley. He credited local municipal and sewer officials, power and utility providers, and others for showing up in a business-friendly manner to seal the deal. Cunningham added that the township zoned the land to allow for manufacturing and thanked owner Jaindl Farms for site work to get it ready for development.
The governor said the project and Lehigh Valley’s growth are proof of success in his approach to cutting red tape for businesses and speeding up permitting and other tasks.
“Before I took office as your governor, we really weren’t even on the field of competition,” said Shapiro, who also addressed the LVEDC’s annual meeting shortly after his inauguration in 2023. “Too many other states were winning the big deals, while we unfortunately were left behind.”
“That has dramatically changed over the last three years,” he added later.
Eli Lilly joins a Lehigh Valley with a gross domestic product topping $57 billion, more than that of Wyoming and Vermont, Cunningham said. Manufacturing represents the biggest sector of the local economy, with more than 700 companies generating $9 billion in annual output.
“Made in Lehigh Valley is our brand. We make things here,” Cunningham said, the SteelStacks stage backed by glass windows looking upon the blast furnaces of the former Bethlehem Steel Corp. “Manufacturing is 16% of the economy, compared to 11% in the U.S.
“Manufacturing jobs have grown at three times the U.S. rate — and that’s before Lilly hires 850 new workers with an average salary of $100,000 per year.”
The LVEDC president touched on challenges facing the region like housing, land, water and energy resources becoming more limited. Affordability is a growing concern among the population now standing at 708,644 people between Lehigh and Northampton counties — both of which contribute funding to the LVEDC’s operations.
“We’ve conquered challenges before,” Cunningham said. “When others said we couldn’t, we did. The collective work of the last 25 years has made the Lehigh Valley a middle America success story.”
Source: LehighValleyLive