Eurofins Lancaster Laboratories on Monday announced that it will add a new 300,000-square-foot biopharmaceutical testing facility and office to its Leola campus, costing about $147 million and adding about 250 jobs over the next three years.
Neal Salerno, senior vice president of Eurofins BioPharma Product Testing, said he’s been working with state officials to plan the project for the past year.
“From our humble roots as a small food testing lab, Eurofins is now the number one testing organization, ensuring that the air you breathe, the water you drink, the food you eat, the medicine you take and the medical devices that you use are safe,” Salerno said during a news conference on Monday.
Lancaster Laboratories was founded in 1961 and provides testing services for biopharmaceutical and pharmaceutical products. In 2011, Belgium-based Eurofins purchased the company.
Salerno did not provide a specific timeline for the project. During the announcement, he was surrounded by state and local officials, as well as Eurofins scientists in white lab coats.
Gov. Josh Shapiro was on hand to announce his administration would provide more than $2 million to help fund the project.
“We’re not only helping bring more crucial testing to more people — we’re creating more new opportunities for folks here in Lancaster,” the first-term Democrat said. “We know that when we invest in a company like Eurofins, we’re also having a positive downstream impact on industries that rely on the testing Eurofins provides.”
The state dollars going toward the projects, according to state Secretary of Community and Economic Development Rick Siger, are almost entirely — about $1.8 million — from a Pennsylvania First Fund grant.
Another $375,000, Siger said, would come from the WEDnetPA grant program and would go toward on-the-job training for new employees.
Eurofins’ latest planned expansion would mark its largest to date, after a five-story, $42 million space opened in 2019. For that project, the state provided the company about $1 million in grant money and $1 million in tax credits.
Ezra Rothman, president of EDC Lancaster, celebrated Eurofins’ announcement. He pointed to the company’s partnership with local educational institutions, like Millersville University, to say students will have a direct “pipeline” to “highly technical, future-oriented jobs.”
A POLITICAL ECONOMY
Shapiro heavily stressed the positive economic impact that Eurofins’ expansion for Lancaster County and Pennsylvania, broadly.
“This is a company that quite literally is the leader in the world,” Shapiro said. “And so it means they can be anywhere in the world, but they’ve chosen to be here in Lancaster.”
Shapiro is a rumored contender for the Democratic Party’s 2028 presidential nomination, and in recent months has increasingly voiced his opposition to President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy.
Shapiro pointed to several positive economic outlooks for Pennsylvania: Moody’s rated it as the only state in the northeast with a growing economy, and Forbes named it one of the best states in the country to start a business.
His words at Eurofins come after posting weeks’ worth of criticism toward Trump and Vice President JD Vance, who both separately visited Pennsylvaniathis month to tout the federal administration’s economic record.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ report this month found unemployment reached 4.6% in November, from 4% at the beginning of Trump’s term in January. And between October and November, the U.S. has lost more than 40,000 net jobs, though November saw jobs added to the economy.