Projects already in the permitting process will more than double the state’s biomanufacturing square footage.

There’s no hope of bringing the auto industry back to Somerville’s Assembly Square, while the textile industry, except for a few brave holdouts, bailed for sunnier climes nearly a century ago. 

But Massachusetts may yet see a manufacturing renaissance as major pharmaceutical and biotech companies look to build highly sophisticated plants to churn out vaccines and other drugs and treatments 

Biotech manufacturing, long the poor stepchild of the life sciences sector, is poised for explosive growth in Greater Boston and beyond over the next few years. 

How explosive? Well, we could be looking at a “tenfold” increase in the amount biotech manufacturing space in the Boston area, said Brendan Carroll, director of research for Cushman & Wakefield in Boston. 

 “[It] has exploded in earnest in this market over the last couple of years,” he said.  

Growth Concentrated in Suburbs 

Scattered across Greater Boston, life sciences manufacturing complexes currently occupy over 870,000 square feet. 

French pharma giant Sanofi has a plant in Framingham – which it took possession of it after buying Genzyme a few years ago – while the company last year sold the old Genzyme manufacturing complex in Allston last year to Resilience, a contract manufacturer. 

But while substantial, these are relatively small potatoes compared to what’s under construction or undergoing the local and state permitting process: 1.2 million square feet of new manufacturing plants at eight different sites. 

And given the astronomical cost of real estate in the Cambridge/Boston/Somerville core, companies are building these plants in the suburbs along the Route 128 and Interstate 495 beltways. 

In Braintree, Hilco Partners has been converting the former Haemonetics headquarters into 152,000-square-foot lab and manufacturing complex, while in Norwood, Moderna announced plans last spring to double the size of it 300,000-square-foot lab and manufacturing complex. 

Out in Devens, Bristol Myers Squibb is expanding its manufacturing complex, while in Boxboro, a former Cisco high-tech corporate campus from the 1990s has been partially converted into biomanufacturing space. 

Ditto for Andover, where IQHQ, which has been building lab space in Boston, recently inked a deal with Oncorus for 88,184 square of biotech manufacturing space out near 495 in the Innovation Park campus. 

Pandemic Provides Big Boost 

Before the pandemic, Massachusetts saw steady growth in biotech manufacturing. But despite being a hub of for life sciences research and oceans of state-of-the-art lab space, manufacturing remained the sidekick here, not the main driver of growth. 

The number of biotech manufacturing jobs in Massachusetts was approaching the 10,000 mark as of mid-2021, according to the Massachusetts Biotechology Council. 

While this represents big growth over the past decade, total employment in the manufacturing side pales in comparison to North Carolina, which had over 20,000 jobs, and California, where the sector employs over 45,000. 

However, COVID-19, that could be poised to change. COVID and the scramble to develop and now manufacture vaccines to treat the virus, has turbocharged the growth of biotech manufacturing in the Boston area. 

Vaccine developer Moderna is a prime example, it the life sciences company expanding its plant in Norwood as part of a larger push to boost production of COVID-19 vaccines by 50 percent. 

But there may be other motivations at work here as well. While biotech manufacturing may not always be a big profit center, vaccine and drug development companies are more motivated now, given the supply chain issues triggered by the pandemic, to keep control over the manufacturing of their products instead of outsourcing the production work. 

The New Blue-Collar Work? 

Whatever the mix of driving factors, all of this is good news for state economic development officials and business leaders, who have been pushing for years to attract more biotech and life sciences manufacturing jobs to the state. 

Greater Boston is booming when it comes to white-collar jobs, especially in areas like life sciences lab and research work, which often requires advanced academic credentials. 

Scott Van Voorhis

One of the attractions of biotech manufacturing is that it while it certainly requires advanced training, you don’t have to have a Ph.D. to work in the field. It also pays impressively well, with a biotechnician able to earn as much as $60,000 in the Boston area. 

Yet while biotech manufacturing space could very well increase tenfold over the coming years, don’t count on a tenfold increase in jobs in the sector. 

As it is in all modern manufacturing in the developed world, automation is playing an ever-increasing role in biotech production as well, Carroll notes. 

That said, it seems likely we will see a significant increase in biotech manufacturing jobs in Massachusetts. 

And no matter how you cut it, that’s bound to be a good thing. 

Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.