< Previous36 M I S S OU RI : M A K I NG . G R O W I NG . MO V I NG .S T A I N L E S S S TEELust one location in the U.S. produces the vast majority of the stainless-steel equipment used in the beverage and food processing, pharmaceutical, dairy and chemicals industries. It’s Southwest Missouri — the Springfield area, specifically. You won’t find another region with so many manufacturers of components and containers used in commercial kitchens, dairy farms, laboratories and breweries anywhere. More than 30 companies are active in the stainless-steel business in greater Springfield, employing a combined workforce of about 3,000.Why Springfield? Because that’s where Paul Mueller opened his heating and sheet metal business in 1940. The rest is history. “Stainless steel fabrication and craftsmanship became dominant in Springfield shortly after WWII when dairy farmers were required to store their milk in refrigerated stainless-steel tanks,” explains Greg Herren, general manager of Multi-Craft Contractors, a provider of electrical, mechanical, sheet metal and other specialized services in Springfield. “Already having experience building stainless steel poultry containers, the Paul Mueller Company joined in with 60-plus other companies around the world and began building what is known as the stainless-steel, refrigerated milk cooler. Mueller became very successful and grew rapidly in Springfield, becoming one of the largest employers in the region.”In the following decades, says Herren, many Mueller employees left to start their own stainless-steel fabrication companies in Springfield. As these companies became successful, other support companies came into existence that specialized in polishing, forming and production of stainless steel subassemblies and component parts — manways, tank heads and shells and specialized fittings, for example.A Legacy Forged in Steel“We may be a little biased, but it truly is because of Paul Mueller,” says Denise Silvey, human resources manager at Paul Mueller Company. “He was the original stainless-steel fabricator in Springfield, Missouri. His hard work and innovation, and that of his employees, spurred a whole new crop of stainless steel fabricators in the region and set the foundation Springfield sparkles with more than two dozen companies supplying everything that’s made of stainless steel.by MAR K AR E N DJHOW SPRINGFIELD BECAME THESTAINLESS STEEL CAPITAL OF THE U.S.Image: Getty ImagesM I S S OU RI : M A K I NG . G R O W I NG . MO V I NG . 37for an ongoing workforce of metal manufacturing.”The original building was 27,000 square feet on a three-acre lot. The company today occupies 1 million square feet on a 50-acre site. It employs about 1,000 people at facilities in Iowa, the Netherlands, Vietnam and Springfield. Tank Components Industries (TCI), a manufacturer of stainless steel and nickel alloy components for metal fabricators, is a more recent addition to Springfield’s stainless-steel cluster. “It was founded in February 2000 by six employees from a local tank fabricator that is no longer in existence and has grown to over 85 employees running two shifts,” says Jason Floyd, president. “Since inception, we have moved three times due to growth, choosing to stay in Springfield.”It’s where the workers for this industry are in abundance, after all.“The concentration of metal fabricators provides a strong labor force for this industry — the depth of talent and skill level far surpasses that of other industries in the area,” says Floyd. “In fact, such a strong manufacturing history has created a significant amount of industry-based trade schools. I believe retention comes down to treating employees with respect, providing benefits and a safe, clean working environment, while maintaining an open-book management style.”Friendly CompetitionAn argument could be made that so many companies in the same business in the same location can increase labor costs and churn as workers seek better opportunities across the street. In fact, it means a better-stocked labor pond for all involved.“This area is often referred to as the stainless-steel manufacturing capital of the world — because of the industry’s size and long history in Springfield, there are many skilled workers and the success builds on itself,” says Joe Reynolds, president of CSI (Central States Industrial), which moved its headquarters from Jefferson City to Springfield in 1984. “The community actively supports the industry as well as the manufacturing industry at large — from training programs at the local community college designed specifically for stainless steel, to the GO CAPS program that introduces manufacturing and engineering careers to high school students through an intensive program, to community-developed marketing efforts that focus on stainless steel career paths and target high school students.” “Springfield has many families who have generations of men and women who made their career in the stainless-steel industry. It is a well-known and revered career in our region.”— Greg Herren, general manager, Multi-Craft ContractorsSGF Chamber MulticraftPhoto courtesy of Missouri Partnership38 M I S S OU RI : M A K I NG . G R O W I NG . MO V I NG .BULL’S-EYEBULL’SBULL’S--EYEEYEEYEEYEMarkets, prowess and multimodal options are among the reasons distribution operations cluster in the nation’s center.by ADAM B R U N SRun a line through the United States that perfectly bisects the country’s north-south population and you’ll nd it running smack dab through the middle of Missouri, an imaginary line just south of I-70.Plot a route along the nation’s mean center of population — “the place where an imaginary, at, weightless and rigid map of the United States would balance perfectly if all residents were of identical weight” — and the U.S. Census Bureau’s tabulations tell us that since 1980 you’ll nd that spot in Missouri too, rolling gently westward along the same path as the old Route 66 to its most recent home, in 2010, in the village of Plato (population: 109) in Texas County, where a geodetic marker commemorates the occasion.If that’s not enough to convince you of the state’s ideal positioning for logistics and distribution, take it from the corporate leaders who are investing millions of dollars there to achieve competitive advantage.Over the 30 months ending in December 2017, Site Selection magazine’s Conway Projects Database has performed its own tabulations of private-sector facility investment and tracked more than 50 logistics and distribution center projects — including one from FedEx in Phelps County, home to the demographic mean center of the U.S. population in 2000 and to Missouri University of Science and Technology (S&T) in Rolla. e $10-million, 30-job project was one of several in Missouri from the Memphis-based package delivery and logistics giant over the past couple of years. Among other projects were a $100-million, 400-job expansion from St. Louis’s beloved Schnuck’s grocery; a $111-million, 360-job new facility from CVS Pharmacy in Kansas City; and a $103-million, 375-job project from Dollar Tree in Johnson County city of Warrensburg, about an hour east of KC along I-70 and home to the University of Central Missouri.In April 2017, Quiet Logistics, Inc., a provider of outsourced ful llment solutions, announced the opening of what it calls the “Ful llment Center of the Future” in Hazelwood, just outside St. Louis. e Massachusetts-based company said the new location was “strategically located to enable two- L OG I S T I C S & D I S T R I B U T I O NM I S S OU RI : M A K I NG . G R O W I NG . MO V I NG . 39and three-day shipping to e-commerce customers across the United States.”At capacity it will be staffed by approximately 250 full-time employees working alongside a Locus Robotics autonomous picking solution for maximum efficiency and accuracy. “Thanks to this new location as well as strategic carrier partnerships, Quiet is now able to reach 100 percent of the U.S. population in two to three days at extremely competitive rates,” said the company, “often with far less accessorial charges than other US-origin ZIP code[s].”The Midwest hub offers e-commerce retailers two-day delivery transit time to New York City, and three-day transit to Los Angeles via ground shipping. “Managing split inventory cross-country is no longer a necessity when a fulfillment network can provide two-day delivery to the majority of [e-commerce] shoppers,” said Dr. Brian Lemerise, president of Quiet Logistics. For Dollar Tree, a new 1.2 million-sq.-ft. distribution operation in Warrensburg’s Brady Commerce Park will help the discount retailer serve the Midwest region of the company’s vast network of more than 14,300 stores in the U.S. and Canada. The company’s 23rd North American distribution center will see 150-200 inbound trucks per day. In 2016, Dollar Tree jumped 150 spots on the Fortune 500, from 330 to 180.“Dollar Tree is a large and growing organization,” said Dollar Tree CEO Bob Sasser in April 2017. “We have been very impressed with the business-friendly approach that the State of Missouri, Johnson County and the City of Warrensburg have provided.”“This was a project that required coordination at all levels, and the joint efforts of the governor, the Missouri Department of Economic Development, the Missouri Development Finance Board, our team, Johnson County, KCP&L, Spire, and the City of Warrensburg were excellent,” said Missouri Partnership CEO Steve Johnson. “It is great to see yet another company take advantage of Missouri’s unique distribution and logistics strengths.”Where Rail and River MeetMissouri’s historical logistics strength goes way back to wagon trails and the Mississippi River. Today those trends converge with rail, No. 1 among 31 logistics industry subsectors when it comes to employment concentration in the state.The St. Louis Regional Freightway was launched a few years ago by Bi-State Development to enhance and grow what its leaders say is $6 billion in goods traveling through the St. Louis area by rail, road, river and runway, while also laying the groundwork to ensure the region’s infrastructure can handle the growth. The push comes at a time when one stretch of the river has seen investment upward of $200 million in barge transfer facilities to rapidly move long unit trains full of agricultural commodities onto barges and on to global markets.At the organization’s annual conference in May 2017, Mike McCarthy, chairman of the Freight Development Committee and president of Terminal Railroad Association (TRRA) of St. Louis, cited the Freightway’s ability to develop and build consensus around a list of 20 priority projects necessary to modernize the region’s freight infrastructure as a key accomplishment, starting Logistics Investments in MissouriCompany City Investment (US$M) JobsSchnuck Markets St. Louis $100 400Dollar Tree Warrensburg 103 375CVS Pharmacy Kansas City 111 360Smith & Wesson Columbia 55 300Ajinomoto North America Holdings, Inc. Joplin 29 220Quiet Logistics St. Louis 6.3 209Syncreon America Kansas City 180Hy-Vee Kansas City 29 161Sioux Chief Manufacturing Kansas City 40 150Menard Sullivan 29.1 129Mid America Logistics St. Louis 120Logoplaste USA Kansas City 35 110Hallmark Cards, Incorporated Independence 100Witte Brothers Exchange, Incorporated Troy 8 100Source: Conway Projects Databasewith replacement of the 127-year-old Merchants Bridge, one of two rail bridges used by six Class I railroads and Amtrak to cross the Mississippi River at St. Louis. Regional highway improvements are also high on the list. The state’s seventh Class 1 railroad, KC Southern, comes to Missouri through Kansas City providing every Class 1 railroad in the country and direct rail access to the deep-water ports in the Gulf of Mexico. “I like to refer to the U.S. supply chain as a weapon of mass competitiveness,” Rose said, citing the Merchants Bridge project opportunity. “Growth in a region’s economy is rarely by accident, or simply because of the natural assets or advantages a region has. It takes work. Here in St. Louis you understand that, and you’re working together.”A U.S. Department of Transportation INFRA (Infrastructure for Rebuilding America) grant application for the bridge replacement project was submitted in early November 2017. With all of the engineering for the replacement project completed, and permitting nearing completion, the focus is now on financing the $214-million project, says the Freightway organization. With two-thirds of the project cost being privately funded by TRRA, the organization considers the project a model for public-private partnerships. Missouri Transportation MapRailroad lines:BNSFCNCPCSXKCSNSUPPortsAirports 2935704449555764721361691597169365067606263545965616124160160412This map of Missouri’s transportation assets offers clues as to why rail transport has the highest employment concentration of 31 different transportation and logistics industry sectors.EN ER G YWhat does it mean to grow the energy sector? Does it refer to helping tech startups and established energy solutions providers expand their businesses? Does it mean utilities nding new ways to increase electrical power supply, dependability and diversi cation? Developing leading-edge lithium-ion batteries? Are we talking renewables and sustainability? Or is it about helping companies save on their energy bills, one LED bulb at a time?Yes.In Missouri, it’s about all those things. Battery rms are present throughout the state, including Johnson Controls’ expanding plant in the northwestern Missouri city of St. Joseph. But it’s southwest Missouri where the most pronounced cluster has formed.Fall 2016 saw one of the state’s leaders in advanced battery development, EaglePicher, open a new 100,000-sq.-ft. Lithium Ion Center of Excellence in its hometown of Joplin in southwest Missouri. A year later, Montana-based ZAF Energy Systems announced the opening of its own new production facility in Joplin, where an initial $20-million investment will bring more than 100 jobs as ZAF seeds the market for nickel-zinc (NiZn) batteries as replacements for lead-acid batteries across such sectors as trucking, manufacturing, road construction and data centers.“We just weren’t able to keep up with the demand with the capacity we had in Montana,” said ZAF President and CEO Randy Moore. “ e new production facility in Joplin will drastically scale up production to several thousand batteries per month, enabling us to keep pace with growing demand while also re ning manufacturing processes and accelerating development e orts.Manufacturing SavvyBy the beginning of 2018, ZAF already had around 23 people making about 200 batteries a month at the 34,000-sq.-ft facility in Crossroads Center Business and Distribution Park. “ e biggest thing that made me excited is we’re addressing an existing and extremely large market,” Wilkins says of the company’s nickel-zinc product, a proven technology that he says has twice the power and capacity of lead-acid, lasts twice as long, but doesn’t cost twice as much. e timing couldn’t be better either, as even lead-acid batteries — a market one might assume to be saturated — are growing business at around 5 percent a year and expect to be a $60-billion market in ve years.Opportunities to power big trucks and data centers are front and center, and ZAF also is working the U.S. Navy on a product for submarines, as more and more power electronics on board mean the craft are running into physical-space constraints for batteries.“ e ecosystem is largely built around the talent pool — that drove 90 percent of our decision,” says Wilkins, though low rents and cost of living help too. “I’m oored at the level of manufacturing [in Missouri]. To nd such a good cross-section of blue-collar workers … you just don’t see that anymore. at made our minds up pretty quick.”Planning AheadMissouri’s array of energy solution providers includes rms such as St. Louis–headquartered Graybar and Emerson Electric, Johnson Controls, HNTB, Burns & McDonnell and Energizer. ey are backed by institutional R&D expertise at the Energy R&D Center at Missouri University of Science and Technology (S&T) in Rolla; the Missouri Center for Advanced Power Systems (MOCAP) 42 M I S S OU RI : M A K I NG . G R O W I NG . MO V I NG . N EWGeneratioImage courtesy of Missouri Partnershipby ADAM B R U N Sat Missouri Southern State University in Joplin; and the Center for Physical and Power Electronics at the University of Missouri’s agship campus in Columbia.But the state’s energy picture wouldn’t be complete without the power and human resources at major utilities such as Ameren, Associated Electric Cooperative and Kansas City Power & Light, which serve as both institutional infrastructure and energy solutions providers for end users.In 2016, Ameren Missouri customers saved more than 52 million kilowatt hours of energy through e ciency projects and earned more than $3.6 million in cash incentives. e program recently helped Kraft Heinz achieve over $1million in incentives at the company’s newly expanded processing plant in Adair County through installing LED lighting and motor controls and optimizing compressed air systems throughout the facility.In addition to installing smart grid technology throughout its own infrastructure, Ameren Missouri is also boosting its own stake in renewable energy, announcing in September 2017 a commitment to add at least 700 megawatts of wind generation by 2020, representing an investment of approximately $1 billion, and to add 100megawatts of solar generation over the next 10 years, with 50 megawatts expected to come online by 2025. Earlier in the year, Ameren Missouri announced plans to build a solar generation facility at St. Louis Lambert International Airport.Across the state, KCP&L is pursuing its own retirement of old-line power plants and installation of renewables. But it’s also leading another surge: According to 2017 rst-quarter numbers released by IHS Automotive and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Kansas City tops the nation in electric vehicle growth. Since deployment of the KCP&L Clean Charge Network began in 2015, the metropolitan area has experienced a 95-percent increase in EV adoption. In addition, Kansas City was ranked No. 1 in driver and charging station growth by ChargePoint, a manufacturer of EV charging stations, in 2016. St. Louis for sure, but Kansas City and other Missouri metros are fi nancial centers too.Two of the top ve “Best Cities for Jobs 2017” are in Missouri, according to Glassdoor, a leading jobs and recruiting website. Kansas City is third, and St. Louis ranks fth. ZipRecruiters recently ranked Kansas City the fourth-best city for jobseekers. Maybe that’s why those aspiring to a career in nancial services, among other sectors, are nding no shortage of opportunities in Missouri.Point-of-sale systems development, insurance and reinsurance, banking, mortgage origination and servicing, money management and investment brokerage services all have sizable operations in the state. In fact, Missouri is home to Edward Jones, RGA, Stifel, Wells Fargo Advisors, and two Federal Reserve banks.Cenlar FSB, a nancial services company specializing in home loans, announced in March it would expand in O’Fallon, Missouri with plans to create 500 jobs. “A robust experienced talent pool made O’Fallon the perfect location for our expansion,” said Cenlar Chairman, President and CEO Gregory Tornquist. “As Cenlar continues to grow, so do the needs and demands of our clients. Opening an operation center in Missouri was the next logical step in making sure we can exceed our clients’ expectations every day.”Consumer tax services provider H&R Block consolidated operations in Kansas City in 2006 into H&R Block Center, a 17-story tower in the central business district where more than 1,600 employees work. e company was founded in Kansas City in 1955. Also based in Kansas City are UMB Financial Corporation and American Century Investments, a global asset management rm with 1,300 employees in ve o ces worldwide.Mid-State Millennial MagnetIt’s not just Missouri’s signature metros that attract nancial services investment. Veterans United Home Loans has been growing rapidly since 2002 in Columbia, where its headquarters employs more than 1,800. With more than 2,400 employees in 20-plus states, Veterans United is the largest VA home purchase lender in the U.S. Two-thirds of those employees are millennials, and where that demographic wants to work is not to be taken lightly.“Millennials are very purpose-driven, and this generation is passionate about the opportunity to help veterans get into homes, especially here in the Midwest where we have a high degree of regard for people who serve,” says Greg Steinho , Vice President, Industry & Regulatory Relations. Home to the University of Missouri, Columbia has a ready supply of talent despite not being a major metro. “It’s a great resource for us 44 M I S S OU RI : M A K I NG . G R O W I NG . MO V I NG .by MAR K AR E N DWALL STREETO th MississippF I NAN C I AL S E R V I C E SPhoto courtesy of Missouri Partnershipto recruit from,” says Steinhoff.Veterans United occupies space in 17 buildings in town, and employees’ average age is somewhere below 30.Not all employees are Columbia natives or Mizzou grads.“It’s been interesting for me to see how attractive Missouri, and particularly mid-Missouri, is to talent coming from the coasts,” notes Steinhoff. “Tech talent from the coasts comes here and sees a similar environment — we were ranked the 9th best workplace for millennials by Fortune in 2017.”‘Phenomenal’ Local TalentSquare co-founders Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey didn’t need a lesson on Missouri’s merits. They’re St. Louis natives, and they’re growing their company’s presence substantially in St. Louis — in the Cortex Innovation Community, specifically. Founded in 2009, San Francisco-based Square develops POS systems used increasingly in small and mid-sized retail and dining establishments worldwide.“We started operations in St. Louis in 2015 and since then have seen considerable growth — from fewer than 10 to more than 300 employees,” says Square spokeswoman Samantha Verdile. “Jim McKelvey said in 2015 that the goal was to have 200 employees in St. Louis within five years, and we’re way past that goal. We’re very excited about the growth taking place there.” The factors behind Square’s rapid growth in St. Louis include a robust economy, a flourishing tech scene and a wealth of local talent, says Verdile. “We came for the talent and opportunity, and it has completely surpassed our expectations. We service small businesses, and those business owners cover every demographic. Commerce happens everywhere, not just on the coasts. It’s very important for us to be involved in communities across the country. St. Louis definitely is one of those, especially with the founders being from St. Louis. More than that, though, the local talent in St. Louis is phenomenal.” Next >