Manufacturers in New Jersey: small plants, big pharma and a lot of bakeries

This report is for brands and buyers looking for a New Jersey contract manufacturer, packer or supplier, people researching the state's manufacturing jobs, and B2B sellers covering New Jersey plants. It covers the federal count, the chemical, pharmaceutical and food clusters, where the plants are, the public companies headquartered here and a prospecting plan for the regulated plants.

New Jersey manufacturing at a glance

County Business Patterns (CBP), the Census Bureau's count of establishments with payroll, shows for 2023 (NAICS 31 to 33):

Ranking the CBP state file ourselves, New Jersey is 22nd by manufacturing employees, and manufacturing is only 5.7% of its private-sector jobs (US: 8.8%). Plants are small, at 32.1 employees against a US average of 43.4, and pay is above the US manufacturing average of $73,202.

Pharmaceuticals, chemicals and personal care

Pay figures divide each group's payroll by its employees (our calculation). Pharmaceutical manufacturing is concentrated in central New Jersey: Middlesex County has 59 pharmaceutical plants with 5,399 employees, and Somerset County 23 with 5,914. Together they hold 42% of the plants and 58% of the jobs. Bergen and Morris counties add 41 more plants.

Food and everything else

Food has the most plants, and 646 of them are bakeries and tortilla makers with 15,523 employees, more than twice the state's 295 machine shops. Computer and electronic products pay the most of the large subsectors, $109,445 a head. Chemicals and plastics plants are the largest, at 65 and 56 employees on average.

Where the plants are

North Jersey (Bergen, Passaic, Essex, Union, Hudson and Morris) has 3,514 plants, half the state's, mostly small. Middlesex and Somerset in central New Jersey have fewer but larger ones, and Somerset's average of 62 employees is the highest of the counties in the table. Camden and Burlington lead South Jersey.

Size: a small-plant state

That's 4,932 plants with 1 to 19 employees (70%), 1,582 with 20 to 99 and 504 with 100 or more. CBP counts establishments with paid employees, not companies: each plant counts once, head offices are offices, and owner-only shops are excluded. Employment is as of March 2023. The petroleum and coal products group (46 plants, 2,105 employees) has a payroll the Census Bureau flags as high-noise, so we don't report its pay.

Public manufacturers headquartered in New Jersey

Of companies with a stock listing and a manufacturing SIC code, 84 give a New Jersey business address in SEC EDGAR. The ten biggest by revenue, as reported in their most recent annual reports on Form 10-K:

Revenue is company-wide and includes plants and sales far beyond New Jersey. For the drug makers in detail, see pharmaceutical companies in New Jersey.

Finding New Jersey manufacturers

1. For improvement programs and introductions, start with NJMEP, New Jersey's NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership center, in Cedar Knolls, with staff around the state.
2. For policy and peers, the New Jersey Business & Industry Association has more than 3,500 members and a manufacturing committee.
3. Confirm the entity in the Division of Revenue's business entity name search, by name, keyword or entity ID.
4. For regulated plants, check that the site is registered for what it makes (FDA establishment registration for drugs, devices and food facilities) and ask for its last inspection outcome.
5. Check the safety record in OSHA's establishment search.

Prospecting New Jersey's regulated plants

New Jersey's market is dense: 7,018 plants in a small state, with North Jersey's small shops a short drive apart. Pharmaceutical, cosmetics and food plants all work under FDA rules, so service vendors sell to quality assurance and engineering as much as to the plant manager, and must pass a supplier qualification before the first order. The payoff is retention: once qualified, a vendor is costly to replace.

Worked example: a calibration lab for regulated plants

Illustrative example. Raritan Calibration and its assumptions are invented; the plant counts are Census figures.

Raritan Calibration (raritancal.example) calibrates balances, temperature sensors and pressure gauges, with certificates written for FDA-regulated manufacturers.

• Pharmaceutical plants (197) plus soap, cleaning compound and toiletry plants (130): 327.
• Raritan assumes a quarter are too small or calibrate in-house, leaving about 245, and starts with central New Jersey, where it judges about half of them are: about 122 accounts.
• With a metrology or QA lead and a maintenance manager at each, a 7% reply rate gives about 17 conversations; at one trial job per three, about 6 new plants.

The hard part is timing: a new line, a plant transfer, an inspection finding. Bebop can search for "Middlesex and Somerset County pharmaceutical and personal care manufacturers with 20 to 499 employees hiring a metrology or validation specialist" and research each one.

Subject: Calibration certificates at [Company] [site]

Hi [first name],

I saw [Company] is [adding a filling line / hiring a validation specialist] at [site]. New equipment usually means a burst of calibration work and certificates that have to hold up in an FDA inspection.

We calibrate on site across central New Jersey, with certificates formatted for your quality system and next-day turnaround on out-of-tolerance reports. Would it help to price your next quarter's schedule?

[Your name], Raritan Calibration

Next step: find the quality, engineering and plant contacts at each site with how to find decision makers.