Global biotech giant chooses Philly’s Navy Yard for new half-acre innovation lab

The Navy Yard’s newest tenant moved to the neighborhood to double down on Philly’s talent and manufacturing opportunities.

French molecular diagnostics company BioMérieux opened its genomics and innovation center on Wednesday. The company’s new 32,000-square-foot facility will have lab, office and manufacturing spaces. 

“There [are] only a few areas in the US where you get this nice mix of education, experience and business-friendly environment to do something like we’re doing,” John Shultz, senior director of sales and marketing, told Technical.ly. 

The new location will be the HQ for research and development scientists as well as operations, manufacturing and quality control professionals at BioMérieux. It will produce diagnostic tests, with a focus on BioMérieux’s xPRO program, which develops unique food safety tests and products for specific producers and markets. 

The company plans to hire locally in the greater Philadelphia region, especially from the talent pool coming out of local universities, Shultz said. Philadelphia ranked in the top 10 markets for life sciences talent for the third year in a row this year, according to real estate services firm CBRE.

BioMérieux found Philly to be a good fit after a local acquisition in 2019. It acquired Invisible Sentinel, a biotech company that made diagnostic tests for food and beverage products, and has been growing its team here ever since. 

The startup told BioMérieux at the time that the talent pool, manufacturing sector, local universities and research and development sector in the Philadelphia region contributed to its initial growth as a company. 

It made sense to keep hiring locally and engaging with the ecosystem once the deal was finalized, Shultz said. BioMérieux initially built up its Philadelphia team at Invisible Sentinel’s space in University City. 

BioMérieux started out making lab tests for hospitals and healthcare facilities in 1963 but expanded over the years to pharmaceutical drug quality tests and food safety tests. The company is well known for developing in-vitro diagnostics, tests that detect diseases and infections. 

Navy Yard’s two-decade business boom

BioMérieux’s new lab spaces fit neatly into the Navy Yard’s current iteration, filled with office spaces for several companies and thousands of employees.

BioMérieux chose to build its facility in the Navy Yard because it provided enough space for the company to design the building exactly the way it wanted, Shultz said. Plus, it was close to other infrastructure like public transportation. 

Over the last 20 years, more companies, locally and globally, have been transforming the Navy Yard from a Naval base into a “mixed-use” community. The neighborhood hosts 150 employers, such as technology company support org Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania and CBRE. 

About 15,000 employees work in the region across companies, but there are also hotels and plans to build residential buildings as well. In 2022, the Navy Yard released a plan for continued development with a focus on economic growth for the community. 

Despite being a French company, over 50% of BioMérieux’s revenue comes from the United States, Shultz said. The company has a North American headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah and other offices across the United States. 

But the new Navy Yard facility will be a cultural hub that can work with regional clients aligned with American culture, he said. 

“We’re going to keep investing in Philadelphia,” Shultz said. “I see it as the engine for a lot of the business that we plan to do in the next decade.”