Bucks County seed and garden manufacturers W. Atlee Burpee Company has been producing seed catalogs, grown plants and garden tools since 1881. But this week, they are not the only ones planting seeds in Bucks County.
The Pennsylvania Industrial Development Authority approved $2.9 million in state investments that will allow Burpee and two other Bucks County manufacturers to expand their operations and add jobs. These expansion efforts will leverage more than $7.2 million in private investment and will grow the manufacturing sector for this suburban region of Philadelphia. Burpee will be buying and renovating an existing building in Warminster. VMD Machine, a plumbing fixtures manufacturer will also be purchasing a new building. And Pendant Systems Manufacturing Company, a manufacturer of lighting suspension systems, will be moving operations to a new facility and adding five new jobs over the next three years. Since the state began making these investments over 25 years ago, this is the first time that all grants were given to a single region.
“We certainly aren’t targeting Bucks County but that region uses PIDA a lot when they are looking for financing for projects,” says PIDA program administrator Kevin Rowland. “They bring us a lot of projects but this is still very unusual.”
PIDA officials believe that a state-wide reduction in manufacturing projects may be the reason for the regional aberration. Manufacturing jobs are down 3.3 percent and the volume of applications that PIDA receives has been declining since the recession. In this round, the Bucks County firms were the only applicants. But the 3.3 percent reduction in manufacturing jobs is an improvement over the previous year and with a new state budget in place, investments like these continue to expand jobs for the manufacturing sector.
“These companies are not moving far and in fact one is moving right down the road,” says Rowland. “But instead of leasing their new facilities, they will be buying and that will allow for more expansion.”
Source: Kevin Rowland, PIDA
Writer: John Steele