Lehigh Valley’s Water Quality Vital to Food and Beverage Companies
Companies like Coca-Cola and Ocean Spray among others that rely on the quality of Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania’s water supply in their processing plants.
2016 Food Processing

For food and beverage companies, water is vital, and the beverage maker had such confidence in the Lehigh Valley’s water purity that it invested $46 million in 2012 to expand its Coca-Cola Refreshments syrup plant in Upper Macungie Township. This allowed Coca-Cola to add several new manufacturing lines, including Powerade, Vitaminwater, and Fuze, and to boost employment.
“Our local bottling plant undergoes three audits for environmental compliance, safety, and quality,” Brake says. “We must meet or exceed Coca-Cola’s standards. The corporation can order a shutdown of our plant to make adjustments, but that has never happened to us. Our plant’s record has been exemplary for the 98 years we have been in operation.”
While some communities might not consider a wastewater treatment plant an “attraction,” a pre-treatment plant built in the 1990s in Upper Macungie Township is a huge draw for food and beverage makers. The plant cleans waste before it enters local sewer lines, saving these industries the high cost of building and operating their own pre-treatment facilities.
When Ocean Spray sought to build a high-volume processing plant for its brand-name line of juices and drinks, it also chose Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. In 2014, the Massachusetts-based cooperative cut the ribbon on a $110 million, 315,000-square-foot bottling facility in Upper Macungie Township. Besides its size and capacity, the plant incorporates a variety of state-of-the-art innovations, including an ultra-pure, highly secure blending room.
“About 40 percent of what Ocean Spray makes and sells passes through our facility,” says Tim Haggerty, plant director. The new facility replaced Ocean Spray’s first processing plant — an outdated facility in Bordentown, N.J., that could no longer meet production requirements.
Ocean Spray and Coca-Cola have plenty of company in the Lehigh Valley including Bimbo Bakeries, the U.S. arm of Mexico’s Grupo Bimbo and the corporate parent for such iconic American brands as Entenmann’s, Thomas’, Arnold, and Sara Lee, among others. And across the street from Ocean Spray’s Macungie Township plant is Nestle Waters — a firm whose very name reflects one of the major reasons why so many food and beverage makers call the Lehigh Valley home: water.
Project Announcements
Finland-Based ADMARES Plans Waycross, Georgia, U.S. Manufacturing Plant
06/01/2023
Toyota Plans Georgetown, Kentucky, Electric Vehicle Operations
06/01/2023
Ranger Design Establishes North Charleston, South Carolina, Operations
05/31/2023
Austrian-Based Kronospan Expands Oxford, Alabama, Operations
05/30/2023
TiiCKER Expands Grand Rapids, Michigan, Operations
05/30/2023
Hanon Systems Establishes Bulloch County, Georgia, Operations
05/26/2023
Most Read
-
Is a Flurry of Fads Shaping Economic Development Policy?
Q2 2023
-
37th Annual Corporate Survey: Economic Pressures Exerting Greatest Effect on Decision-Makers
Q1 2023
-
Nearshoring — North America’s Next Factory
Q2 2023
-
Front Line: Water Supply Increasingly Affecting Location Decisions
Q2 2023
-
First Person: Labor Crunch in the Construction Industry
Q2 2023
-
Life Science Conversions in Real Estate
Q2 2023
-
19th Annual Consultants Survey: Clients Challenged by Tight Labor Market, Energy Availability
Q1 2023