The global profile of corporate end-user facility investment activity in 2024 mirrors the overall economy.
Some things stay the same: The number of major facility construction projects qualifying for the Conway Projects Database (at least $1 million invested, 20 new jobs create or 20,000 new sq. ft. of space) was highest in Machinery, Equipment & Construction for the eighth year in a row, at 1,672, up by 4.2% over the total tally in 2023. Food & Beverage hung on to second place with 1,306 projects globally, up by 1.6% year-over-year.
More significant changes occur in the next slots: Transport & Logistics tallied 998 projects, down 8.4% from the 1,090 projects recorded in 2023, possibly reflecting a cool-down from a post-pandemic supply chain scramble. But the most dramatic change came in Business & Financial Services, which leapt from 772 projects in 2023 to 954 in 2024 — a 23.7% spike that pushed last year’s No. 4 Chemicals & Plastics to No. 5 with 946 projects.
Just outside of the top five sectors is last year’s No. 5 IT & Communications (i.e., data centers). But make no mistake, it’s still growing, as the sector’s tally went from 863 projects in 2023 to 927 in 2024, up by 7.4%.
The map on these pages displays the top projects by investment in each of the five top industries. Among the standout projects:
China’s Kibing Solar New Materials added onto its substantial Chinese manufacturing base by opening a new $1.6 billion photovoltaic glass manufacturing facility at the Kota Kinabalu Industrial Park (KKIP) in Sabah, Malaysia, that creates 1,400 jobs initially and aims to create 5,000 jobs in the future.
Caterpillar in August 2024 broke ground on the largest expansion at its Lafayette, Indiana, large engine facility since it opened in 1982. A new building on the campus will allow the company to expand its ability to build and test new engines, genset packages and provide aftermarket component, Caterpillar said. One of the motivating forces is those ever-multiplying data centers. Caterpillar said the expansion, which will add 100 new jobs to a plant workforce of 1,900, “will support a growing need for backup and prime power for data centers globally, driven in part by cloud computing and generative artificial intelligence.”
China’s Fufeng Group, a bio-fermentation industry leader specializing in the production of amino acids and their derivatives and the largest producer of monosodium glutamate and xanthan gum in the world, is investing in a vertically integrated industrial park in Kazakhstan for deep processing of corn, including starch sugar and amino acid fermentation plants, and also plans to operate a coal-fired thermal power plant and a wastewater treatment plant on the site. The office of the Kazakhstan prime minister says the plant will create around 1,000 jobs. “Kazakhstan seeks to increase the production of products with high added value, and the construction of complexes for deep processing of grain is a priority,” said Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov in November. “This is a strategic direction that allows us to diversify the economy and expand export opportunities.”
