Pharmaceutical maker embarks on Allentown expansion

The move will give the growing company space that’s roughly 37,000 square feet larger than its current home of 3,000 square feet.

The company, US Specialty Formulations LLC, needs more space, said its co-founder and CEO, Kyle Flanigan.

“Three years ago, we recognized we were getting a lot of requests from customers to handle projects that were larger than what we could handle at our current site,” Flanigan said. “The goal was to find a building regardless of the site. In a modern business environment, that physical location is irrelevant in our case because we had special needs for the building.”

The company looked at a number of sites, including Arizona, Florida and New York before settling on Allentown. Flanigan said he wanted to find an existing site that was affordable, rather than building new.

US Specialty Properties LLC recently paid $1 million for the 40,810 square-foot building, which is at 101 E. Lexington St. in Allentown, according to Lehigh County property records. The LLC is a separate company with similar principals, Flanigan said.

US Specialty Formulations has been operating since 2013 out of Ben Franklin TechVentures, a workspace for early stage companies on Lehigh University’s Mountaintop Campus in Bethlehem.

The startup environment allowed the company to establish itself, but Flanigan said the new site will offer more space for manufacturing and testing products, in addition to space for employees. Right now, it has 13 workers but Flanigan said he is looking to hire more.

Over the next couple of years, the company expects to spend nearly $3 million on renovations and expects to move the entire company into the building in stages wrapping up by mid-2020, Flanigan said.

The company has designed the new facility to meet regulations from both the U.S. Food & Drug Administration and the European Union, he added.

“It really puts us out of the startup phase and into the expansion phase,” Flanigan said. “We are able to handle much larger contracts and gives us space to add equipment.”

US Specialty Formulations manufactures products for health care providers and big pharmaceutical companies, he said.

“We focus primarily on injectable pharmaceuticals and some topical formulations,” Flanigan said.

The company has some customers in the EU now, and some customers requesting shipments to Asia.

Lisa Meszler Lyon, an agent with ALT Realty of Bethlehem represented the sellers, Elizabeth and James Socci, in the transaction.

Mike Adams, senior vice president of NAI Summit of South Whitehall Township, represented the buyer in the transaction.