A French logistics and supply chain company has opened a new distribution center in Palmer Township, Pennsylvania, and its main job is an unusual one for an industrial park: storing Easter candy. GEODIS now operates out of 1560 Van Buren Road, where the facility's primary purpose is handling seasonal confectionery products ahead of the holiday, according to a company spokesperson.
The warehouse, described by WFMZ.com as operating from a nearly 400,000-square-foot building, is needed because products are shipped in and stored throughout the year before being released for the holiday season, a GEODIS spokesperson said. A commercial listing for the same address from commercialcafe.com puts the Class A warehouse and distribution facility at 249,878 square feet, a figure that does not line up with WFMZ's reporting; it is unclear how the two descriptions of the site relate to each other.
Staffing at the new site will ramp up seasonally. GEODIS plans to bring on as many as 30 team members during the first quarter, when candy is prepped for release, before scaling back to around 12 team members for the remaining three quarters of the year, the company told the station.
No Robots on This Candy Line
Despite GEODIS using autonomous vehicles and robot technology in some of its other warehouses, a company spokesperson said the Palmer Township facility does not rely on that kind of automation. The distinction places the Van Buren Road operation on the more traditional, labor-driven end of the company's network.
GEODIS is a French logistics and supply chain management company that offers freight transport, contract logistics and other distribution services. The Van Buren Road site marks the company's second location in Northampton County — GEODIS also runs a warehouse on Township Line Road in Lower Nazareth Township, per the station's report.
CommercialCafe's listing for the Van Buren Road property shows the building has 210 car parking spaces, offering a glimpse of the physical footprint GEODIS has moved into even as the exact square footage remains unresolved between sources.
A Busy Corner of Palmer Township
Van Buren Road has been a magnet for warehouse development for years. In 2022, MRP Industrial proposed two buildings totaling 645,460 square feet on 50 acres at the southwest corner of Van Buren Road and Main Street, according to lehighvalleylive.com, on land previously used for sewage sludge. The Lehigh Valley Planning Commission found that proposal generally consistent with regional planning goals, citing its suitability for freight mobility while minimizing quality-of-life impacts on residents.
Other nearby addresses tell a similar story of steady industrial buildout. A March 2022 township report documented a 242,620-square-foot building at 1540 Van Buren Road, built in 2017 and occupied by iHerb for health-supplement order fulfillment, while a 425,000-square-foot building at 1520 Van Buren Road, built in 2015, has housed tenant Carbel with roughly 143,000 square feet available, per palmertwp.com. Elsewhere in the township, supervisors approved Carson Companies' plan for two speculative buildings totaling 400,000 square feet back in 2018, according to mcall.com.
Since 2008, 17 large-scale industrial buildings have gone up on 16 properties in the northern end of Palmer Township, totaling roughly 6 million square feet, with about half located in the Chrin Commerce Centre, according to a 2023 report from lehighvalleylive.com. A March 2022 township report put occupancy across those 17 buildings at 92%, with 480,770 square feet still unoccupied at the time.
Regional Demand Still Running Hot
GEODIS's expansion arrives as the broader Lehigh Valley industrial market stays tight. Colliers reported that vacancy across the region fell to 8.35% in the second quarter of 2026, alongside more than 1.7 million square feet of transactions and 1.86 million square feet of positive absorption, according to lvb.com. Average asking rents for industrial space climbed to $12.57 per square foot over the same period, even as new construction starts moderated to 473,909 square feet and nearly 2.8 million square feet remained under construction regionwide.
Colliers also noted that Eastern Pennsylvania saw strong logistics demand from a diverse pool of occupiers in the first half of 2026, a trend that lines up with GEODIS choosing Palmer Township for a seasonal operation built around one of the country's biggest candy-buying holidays.
