International look to Pa. businesses



By Crissa Shoemaker Debree

When Pennsylvania officials were courting a South Korean dental implant manufacturer, they sent the dean of the University of Pennsylvania dental school to Seoul with a letter of recommendation from the governor.

The move, one of several to attract the company, paid off. In 2006, Osstem announced it would open its American headquarters at U.S. Steel's former Fairless Works site in Falls, not far from another international company, Gamesa.

Foreign companies in Pennsylvania, like Osstem and Gamesa, employ more than 233,000 state residents, according to the U.S. Commerce Department and the Organization for International Investment.

That puts Pennsylvania in fourth place in the nation in terms of "insourcing" - a term coined to reflect the number of American employees of international companies headquartered in the states, the investment organization says. (California, New York and Texas are first, second and third.)

"Many times, Americans don't realize how many foreign-owned firms are around them," said David Briel, executive director of the Pennsylvania Center for Direct Investments. "Those kind of things escape the notice of everyday knowledge."

The center is a part of the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development.

Foreign companies in Pennsylvania include Germany's Siemens AG and GlaxoSmithKline, the British pharmaceutical company.

In Bucks, the former U.S. Steel site - know known as the Keystone Industrial Port Complex - has been an attractive lure for foreign companies. It's been designated a tax-free zone until 2019. Gamesa employs about 600 people there and Osstem plans the same number of jobs. Early last year, Gov. Ed Rendell welcomed AE Polysilicon, a New Jersey-based company with ties to Taiwan, to the site.

Rendell has heavily courted international companies, Briel said. AE Polysilicon was given a $1.9 million financial package to bring 150 jobs to the area. The state has one of the largest international teams of contractors, whose sole job is to lure companies here, Briel said.

"This department has 16 people around the world who are there to meet companies in their home markets and in their language and in their own time zone, to attract them to Pennsylvania," he said. "It's been a major focus of this administration to create jobs, understanding [that] many of the jobs created in the U.S. today are going to be from international firms."

The 50 largest foreign companies in the U.S. - led by oil companies BP Global, from the U.K., and the Netherlands' Royal Dutch Shell PLC - bring in more than $1.1 trillion in revenue in the U.S., according to the Organization for International Investment. About 5.1 million Americans are employed through insourcing, the organization said.

In Pennsylvania, a third of the insourced jobs come from manufacturing companies, the organization found.

"We're looking for companies that will create family-sustaining jobs, particularly manufacturing," Briel said. "[At Fairless Works] ... Just there you have a wind turbine manufacturer, a solar panel supplier and dental implant manufacturer. All three industries are up and coming. The future looks quite healthy."

Crissa Shoemaker DeBree can be reached at 215-949-4192 or cshoemaker@phillyBurbs.com.