Regional Manufacturers Experience Dynamic Growth; Rebound Quickly with NEPIRC Assistance

The Northeastern Pennsylvania Industrial Resource Center (NEPIRC) closed out its most recent fiscal year on June 30, 2021, with reports of dynamic growth and much faster than expected COVID-19 recovery among its manufacturing clients over the past year.

Throughout the past 12 months, NEPIRC assisted more than 400 manufacturers across northeastern, the northern tier and central Pennsylvania in responding to the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and rebuilding their businesses. Of those companies, more than 100 received expanded services tailored to their unique circumstances and challenges. Citing client-reported data gathered through multiple independent sources and subsequently verified by the U.S. Department of Commerce, NEPIRC’s President and CEO, Eric Joseph Esoda, announced that those companies recorded $150.5 million in additional revenue over the past year as a result of NEPIRC’s assistance while also attributing $17.2 million in savings due to increased efficiency and productivity. Despite worldwide economic challenges throughout the latter half of 2020 and first six months of 2021, NEPIRC’s clients invested more than $22.1 million in expanding or modernizing their regional manufacturing facilities and were able to create and retain 2,045 good-paying area manufacturing jobs.

“The outstanding impacts that manufacturers are reporting from their engagements with NEPIRC are indicative of the industrial sector’s potential to drive our Commonwealth, and even our country, out of the economic uncertainties that the COVID-19 pandemic left in its wake,” said Mr. Esoda. “We’ve consistently held that our industrial sector is Pennsylvania’s best bet for real, consistent and sustainable economic recovery and expansion and, in fact, fuels growth in other sectors that rely upon manufacturing activity. These results prove that our manufacturers are roaring back to life and will once again drive our Commonwealth forward,” he added.

According to aggregate client data within NEPIRC’s year-end reports, 60% of the manufacturers NEPIRC assisted throughout the pandemic reported the avoidance of layoffs as a direct result of the advisement they received. A nearly equal number of clients (58%) credited NEPIRC with enabling them to retain customer relationships and sales that would have otherwise been lost by working with them to meet production requirements or find alternative suppliers when primary supply chains were disrupted by COVID-19. A full 40% of NEPIRC clients reported increased sales amidst the pandemic thanks to NEPIRC’s assistance in attracting new customers or pivoting into new markets – and over 30% of the companies that utilized NEPIRC’s services over the past 12 months created new manufacturing jobs within the region.

Across the nation, NEPIRC ended its fiscal year as one of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s top-performing Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) affiliates, particularly with respect to the number of companies it served throughout the pandemic and the levels of jobs its clients created and retained over the past year.