Manufacturers in Pennsylvania: seven regions, and why Lancaster County leads the count

This report is for anyone working across Pennsylvania's manufacturing economy: buyers sourcing a supplier, analysts and site selectors, job seekers, and B2B sellers dividing the state into territories. It covers the federal count, the seven regions and their counties, what each makes, the public companies based in the state, and how to build a prospect list one region at a time.

Pennsylvania manufacturing at a glance

US Census Bureau County Business Patterns (CBP) 2023, all of manufacturing (NAICS 31 to 33):

From the same state file, Pennsylvania is fifth for manufacturing employees, behind California, Texas, Ohio and Michigan. Manufacturing is 9.9% of its private-sector jobs, close to the national 8.8%, because the state's service economy is large too. Its average plant (42.7 employees) is almost exactly the US average.

Seven regions, seven resource centers

Pennsylvania's NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership, PA MEP, is run by the Pennsylvania Industrial Resource Center Foundation through seven regional Industrial Resource Centers (IRCs). Their regions are a practical way to divide the state:

Berks County (Reading), with 458 plants and 33,123 employees, sits between the South Central and Southeast regions; check which center covers a given county before you call. The counties named here hold 7,537 of the state's plants (57%). Lancaster, York, Berks and Lehigh plants average 39 to 72 employees, while Bucks, Chester and Philadelphia average about 28: the southeast suburbs are full of small specialist shops.

What Pennsylvania makes

Pay is annual payroll per employee, which we calculated from the Census figures. A few detailed codes stand out:

• Food and drink. 547 bakeries and tortilla makers, 578 beverage plants and 151 sugar and confectionery plants with 10,568 employees.
• Pharmaceuticals. 106 plants, 17,203 employees, average pay $149,503.
• Steel. 40 iron and steel mills with 12,559 employees, averaging 314 each, plus 71 plants making steel products from purchased steel.

Food is concentrated in the south central counties. Lancaster, York, Berks, Lebanon, Dauphin and Cumberland have 355 food plants with 27,484 employees, 35% of the state's food manufacturing jobs; Lancaster alone has 147 food plants.

Size of Pennsylvania's plants

The 1-to-19 row combines the Census classes 1 to 4 (4,172), 5 to 9 (2,343) and 10 to 19 (2,124); the last row combines 500 to 999 (89) and 1,000 or more (32). CBP counts establishments with paid employees, not companies: a manufacturer with plants in Erie and York is two establishments, its headquarters counts as an office, and owner-only shops are excluded.

Public manufacturers headquartered in Pennsylvania

SEC EDGAR lists 67 companies with a listed ticker, a manufacturing SIC code and a Pennsylvania business address. The ten largest, each checked against its latest 10-K:

Revenue is company-wide. Pittsburgh's share of the list reflects head offices, not plant counts: the Southwest region has fewer plants than the Southeast. For the steel side of the state, see the largest steel companies.

Finding Pennsylvania manufacturers by name

1. Pick a region first, using the table above, and ask its IRC about local programs and the manufacturers they work with. The statewide umbrella is PA MEP.
2. Use county chambers for member lists. Many publish a manufacturing category in their online directories; the Washington County Chamber of Commerce, south of Pittsburgh, lists about 40 member manufacturers with addresses.
3. Follow policy news through the Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association, the Harrisburg-based voice of the state's manufacturers.
4. Confirm the entity with the Pennsylvania Department of State's business name search; the Department says all its business records are public.
5. Check safety history in OSHA's establishment search before you visit a plant or sign a contract.

Prospecting Pennsylvania manufacturers

Work the state region by region. Each region has a different mix, so the same offer needs a different list: a food safety service belongs in the South Central counties, a coatings or chemicals offer in the Southeast and Southwest, a foundry or metals service in the Northwest and Southwest. Within a region, plants with 20 to 249 employees (4,176 statewide) are usually the sweet spot for services sold to a plant manager; under 20 employees the owner buys, and over 250 corporate procurement often sets the vendor list.

Worked example: a food safety consultancy in South Central Pennsylvania

Illustrative example. The firm, its rates and its assumption about plant size are invented; the plant counts are Census data.

Susquehanna Food Safety (susquehannafs.example) prepares food and beverage plants for third-party food safety audits and FDA inspections.

• Food plants in Lancaster, York, Berks, Lebanon, Dauphin and Cumberland: 355. Beverage plants in the same counties: 99.
• Susquehanna assumes a third are too small to need audit support, leaving about 300 accounts.
• With two contacts per plant (the plant manager and the quality or food safety lead), that's 600 people; at a 6% reply rate, 36 conversations, and at one engagement per four conversations, 9 clients.

The research is in knowing which plants are facing an audit, a new retail customer or a recall scare. Bebop can search for "Lancaster and York County food manufacturers with 20 to 249 employees hiring a food safety or quality manager" and research each match.

Subject: [Company]'s next food safety audit

Hi [first name],

I saw [Company] is [hiring a food safety coordinator / adding a packaging line]. New lines and new people are where audit findings usually come from.

We run mock audits for food plants in Lancaster and York counties and leave a corrective action list your team can close before the real one. Would a mock audit in [month] be useful?

[Your name], Susquehanna Food Safety

Next step: for how plants buy and who signs, read the manufacturing industry guide, or see the all-industry picture in companies in Pennsylvania.