
Driving Long Island’s Innovation Economy: The Pharmaceutical/Nutraceutical Growth Factor
The purpose of this report is to raise awareness of the Pharmaceutical/Nutraceutical industry’s significance, its history, its potential, and its needs among both the industry’s businesses and Long Island’s regional partners. In addition, this report is also intended to raise awareness among Long Island’s general public about the quality job opportunities and meaningful economic impact Pharmaceutical/ Nutraceutical manufacturers have on Long Island.
The Suffolk County Industrial Development Agency (SCIDA) and Suffolk County Executive Steven Bellone convened a roundtable of industry executives in March 2016 to hear first-hand about the opportunities and challenges for this sector on Long Island. While quality of life; world-class educational institutions; proximity to New York City; and a strong, legacy manufacturing workforce all ranked high as regional assets for the industry, one of the recurring themes of the meeting was the trouble that industry executives faced in attracting and retaining qualified workers.
SCIDA knew it would need to gather in-depth, first-hand information from Long Island’s Pharmaceutical/Nutraceutical manufacturers. Gathering this type of information requires workforce expertise, extensive regional contacts, and an entrepreneurial spirit. SCIDA reached out to the Long Island Regional Office of the Workforce Development Institute (WDI) to get familiar with Long Island’s Pharmaceutical/Nutraceutical companies first-hand and gain meaningful, practical ground-level information to position SCIDA and WDI to provide the support the sector needs.
Learn about the findings in this report.