Pharmaceutical companies in Massachusetts: where the biologics plants and the labs are

This report is for people researching Massachusetts drugmakers: scientists and operators deciding where to work, suppliers and contract partners screening customers, and sellers planning a territory around Route 128 and Interstate 495. It counts plants from Census data and registered sites from FDA's file, checks the listed companies in their 10-Ks, and ends with a prospecting plan.

Massachusetts in the Census data

County Business Patterns (CBP) 2023, NAICS 3254 (Pharmaceutical and Medicine Manufacturing), Massachusetts:

CBP counts establishments with paid employees, not companies, and leaves out the self-employed. A company with a Cambridge lab and a Norwood plant counts as two establishments in two industries.

A biologics state

Biologics are 28% of the state's establishments in the code, against 15% nationally (441 of 2,905 in the six-digit counts).

The Census Bureau doesn't publish the 1,000 or more cell; the published classes already add up to 145, so the derived figure is zero. Half the establishments (72) have fewer than 20 employees, 37 have 20 to 99 and 36 have 100 or more.

Where the plants are

Worcester's employee total was published but flagged high-noise: the Census Bureau's confidentiality noise moved it by 5% or more. Counties with fewer establishments (Hampshire, Plymouth, Bristol) have the same flag.

Labs outnumber plants

NAICS 3254 leaves out most of the Massachusetts industry. In the same 2023 data the state had 687 biotechnology R&D establishments (NAICS 541714) with 35,946 employees, and 149 drug wholesale establishments (NAICS 424210) with 18,922. Of the R&D establishments, 273 have 20 or more employees. If you're job hunting or selling lab products, that's the bigger market.

FDA-registered drug sites

DECRS, FDA's Drug Establishments Current Registration Site, covers firms that make, prepare, compound or process drugs sold in the US. Here's what the 30 October 2026 download shows for the state:

Framingham has the most registrations (11), then Cambridge (7), Boston (6), Canton and Lexington (5 each). Registrants include Genzyme (seven manufacturing registrations in Framingham), Shire Human Genetic Therapies (Lexington, Cambridge and other towns), Bristol-Myers Squibb (Devens), ModernaTX (Norwood), Vertex (Boston), Alnylam (Cambridge and Norton), AbbVie Bioresearch Center (Worcester), Lantheus Medical Imaging (North Billerica) and Catalent Massachusetts (Chelsea). The 10-Ks fill in the picture: Moderna describes its Cambridge science center, its Norwood technology campus of about 722,000 square feet and a Marlborough biomanufacturing plant; BMS says its Devens cell therapy plant was completed in 2023; Merck names Boston and Cambridge among its principal US research facilities.

Listed drugmakers headquartered in Massachusetts

SEC EDGAR shows 117 listed companies in SIC codes 2833 to 2836 with a Massachusetts business address, second only to California. The largest, checked in each latest 10-K:

For the global league table these companies sit in, see the largest pharmaceutical companies and the largest biotech companies.

Checking a Massachusetts company

1. Registration. Search DECRS by firm name to see what each site is registered to do, and remember that a registration is the company's own filing, not an FDA approval.
2. State licence. FDA lists the Massachusetts Office of Health and Human Services as the agency that licenses wholesale drug distributors; check a licence on the state's Check a Health Care License site.
3. Compliance history. FDA's Data Dashboard shows inspections, warning letters and recalls.
4. The network. MassBio, the state's biotechnology council, has a member directory and a careers section, and the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center publishes data and insights on the state's life sciences R&D.

Selling into Massachusetts

Worked example: a lab relocation firm

Illustrative example. The firm and its prices are invented; the counts come from CBP 2023.

Fenway Lab Moves (fenwaylab.example) relocates and decommissions laboratories.

1. Pick the market. 273 biotechnology R&D establishments in Massachusetts have 20 or more employees.
2. Do the arithmetic. Reaching the operations or facilities lead at 40% gives 109 conversations. If 8% are planning a move or a consolidation within a year, that's 9 projects to bid, and winning 3 at $70,000 each brings $210,000.
3. Watch for triggers. A new lease, a financing round or a site closure in a filing is the reason to call this quarter rather than next year.

Spotting those triggers across hundreds of companies is slow by hand; Bebop researches each account in a list and flags what's happening at the company.

Subject: Your move to [new site]

Hi [first name],

I read that [company] is [moving to / consolidating into / closing] [site] this year.

Operations leads tell us the hard part of a lab move isn't the trucks, it's keeping instruments qualified and samples in temperature on the way.

We've moved and decommissioned labs around Boston and Cambridge for regulated teams. Would a 20-minute call to walk through your timeline be useful?

[Your name]
[Phone number]

Next step: compare an older manufacturing state in the New Jersey pharmaceutical market report.