Nokia to expand Allentown photonics plant, add jobs in $30 million project backed by Shapiro

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Nokia will expand its photonics plant in Allentown, nearly doubling its local workforce to more than 500 jobs and increasing production capacity up to tenfold, the company and Gov. Josh Shapiro announced Tuesday.

The roughly $30 million project includes about $4 million in state assistance and $10 million in federal CHIPS tax credits, the company said. It is part of Nokia’s broader $4 billion plan to invest in U.S. research and manufacturing.

The site employs about 400 people and has hired 160 technicians and engineers in the past year, with roughly 100 more positions on the way, President and CEO Justin Hotard said. The new jobs are in engineering, manufacturing and research and development.

Nokia, once known worldwide for cell phones, now makes the gear that carries internet and telecom data.

The Allentown plant focuses on moving that data as light: most chips shuttle information as electrical signals, but photonic chips use beams of light, which can carry far more data while using less energy.

Workers there assemble those light-based chips into finished parts and test them, a process the industry calls advanced packaging. The parts then go into the networking equipment that links data centers and routes traffic across the internet.

Nokia said the plant is one of only a few U.S. sites doing that work, with less than 2 percent of it done domestically, and Hotard cast the expansion as a way to bring more of it home. The added capacity is expected to be running by the end of September, and the company projects more than $500 million in local economic impact over five years.

Much of that demand comes from data centers, which have become a contentious subject in the Lehigh Valley. Several large projects in the area have drawn resident opposition over their power use, effect on electric bills, water demand and loss of farmland.

Asked at the event how much of the technology would serve data centers, Hotard said they are its main market but argued Nokia’s components make the facilities more efficient and could spread computing across smaller, connected sites rather than large, centralized campuses.

Shapiro called the project proof that “we’re competing again, and we’re winning.” He has actively courted AI and data-center investment, including Amazon’s $20 billion plan for Pennsylvania computing campuses, which he has called the largest private investment in state history.

U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, whose district includes the Lehigh Valley, and U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick praised the investment, with McCormick calling it important for both the economy and national security.

Jaime Marie Whalen of the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp. said companies like Nokia choose the region because the workforce, supply chain and technical expertise are already in place.

The expansion deepens the Lehigh Valley’s long tech lineage. Western Electric’s Allentown works opened the world’s first transistor mass-production line there in 1951. That work helped seed the region’s semiconductor industry.