< Previous48 JANUARY 2025 SITE SELECTION team at Beyond Gravity that evaluated various locations in Southern Europe, including Portugal and Spain. Lisbon quickly stood out as the ideal choice, offering the conditions I described above. Choosing Lisbon supports Beyond Gravity’s expected growth by strengthening our international network, addressing the high demand for talent we currently struggle to find at other locations, and enhancing our competitiveness. Additionally, Lisbon plays a key role in driving digital transformation and enabling seamless cross-site collaboration, which are critical to our long-term success. What are the specific skills Beyond Gravity seeks? Mário Vidal: The team we’re creating in Lisbon is contributing to the centers of competence across Space Engineering, Finance, IT, Quality and Supply Chain to drive the digital transformation and business growth of Beyond Gravity globally and supporting Beyond Gravity’s growth on a global scale. Thus, we are looking for collaborators with a degree on these topics. Projects like Hera, the European Space Agency’s planetary defense mission against asteroid strikes, and others on Beyond Gravity’s client list seem like they would be very attractive for recruiting local and global talent to such exciting, future-focused work. True? Mário Vidal: Absolutely. Projects like Hera and other high-profile missions on Beyond Gravity’s client list are incredibly compelling for attracting talent, both locally and globally. The fascination of space exploration resonates deeply, inspiring engineers and specialists to contribute to something truly extraordinary. Beyond Gravity’s purpose — to advance humankind — is at the heart of what we do. These missions are not just about technology; they’re about pushing the boundaries of what’s technically feasible and playing a role in shaping the future. This sense of purpose and the opportunity to work on groundbreaking projects are key factors in drawing top talent eager to innovate and make an impact. Colt Technology Services UK-based telecommunications technology company Colt Technology Services, which annually sponsors a fundraising bike ride from London to Paris, knows how to settle in for a long-term commitment. The company invested the equivalent of more than $120 million in Portugal’s digital infrastructure and data center ecosystem from 2001 to 2023, and the pace of investment is only picking up steam since the company chose to establish the first of three competence centers in the country. Among the projects Colt is involved in is the SINES DC project, a 1.2-GW data center campus being developed by Start Campus in Sines on Portugal’s coast. Carlos Jesus is vice president for Global Service Delivery and country manager at Colt Technology Services. Have you ever ridden in the Colt bike ride between London and Paris? Carlos Jesus: Unfortunately not. I prefer to say, I’m waiting for the Colt Bike ride to reach Portugal, so maybe Lisbon – Madrid could be a nice option. I need to start lobbying for this. Describe the company’s location history and growth in Portugal. Carlos Jesus: Colt started operations in Lisbon in 2001 as the 29th Colt city, deploying metropolitan fiber network and innovating in the market by providing ethernet connectivity between building and international services via our Long Distance Network. Our first customer signature was in November 2001. Since then, the Colt network expanded to Porto in 2005, connected eight business parks across Portugal, over 800 enterprise buildings, 15 key data centers, and reached 830+ kilometers of metropolitan network fiber in Portugal, and 1,765 kilometers of Long Distance Network connecting Lisbon and Porto to Madrid and Bilbao. In 2016, Colt created in Portugal the first center of competence — Premium Network Services — with Among the Portugal projects Colt Technology Services is involved in is the SINES data center campus, described by developer Start Campus as “one of the largest hyperscale data center ecosystems in Europe, acting as a gateway between Europe, Africa and the Americas.” Photo courtesy of Start Campus SITE SELECTION JANUARY 2025 49 specialized engineers supporting our top customers across the globe. Since then, due to the success underpinned by talent abundance in Portugal, we’ve expanded our operations in Portugal, almost multiplying by three times our people in multiple areas such as operations & engineering, finance, human resources, sales support and more recently software development in our strategic services as an SD-WAN and OnDemand/NaaS platform. How far as Portugal come in both the digital talent and hard digital infrastructure categories, and what is Colt doing to improve both? Carlos Jesus: Over the years, Portugal developed significantly the hard infrastructures. On the connectivity side, very early the regulator made it easier to share duct infrastructures and enable massive fiber deployments, which enable strong competition. Portugal has historically a strong position from a subsea space, but it felt like it was “the best kept secret” and only more recently we’ve seen a big boom, with major recent new subsea investments, many of them driven by hyperscalers, which is driving significant data center investments as well. Portugal can be an important digital infrastructure hub in the world! Other investments are agreed, in terms of airport connectivity expansions as well as international high-speed train, which will boost even further our potential. On the talent side, we see Portugal as very strong due to very good universities across the country. For example, in the software development areas, there are not only the great technical skills and ease with speaking English, but the cultural soft skills with focus on quality, problem solving and agility — all very strong [attributes], and reason for the growth in this area. I also believe Portugal’s cost of living, weather, security and seashore have been critical factors to attract foreign young talent and Colt Portugal also has been benefiting from this, as we have great native-speaking German, French, Italian and Spanish talent supporting Colt customers from Portugal. Regarding Colt, we are the only true digital infrastructure player which combines the local metropolitan area networks (MANs) with our own fiber, with the global connectivity to the over 230 connected cities with 50+ MANs. We also connect over 1, 100 data centers in the world. In Portugal we continue investing to enhance further and further our digital infrastructure. In 2024, we invested around €1 million in connecting some new data centers as well as building the Tier1 IP PoP for IP transit I mentioned before. In the past, we became the first provider to deploy 800Gbps wave technology in the L-band across a terrestrial network in a partnership with Ciena. This was in the Lisbon – Madrid Long Distance Network segment, because we see Portugal’s potential as a global digital infrastructure hub. With our network, we are enabling high connectivity from Europe into Portugal and going to the several subsea cables. Also we are enabling backhaul capacity from the Portuguese landing stations to the main European hubs. On the people side, within Colt Portugal, our team of software engineers are working hard in enabling Colt award winning services like SD- WAN and OnDemand as our Network as a Service platform. What else should our global corporate readers know about your team’s experience doing business in Portugal? Carlos Jesus: We’ve seen very strong government enthusiasm in creating in Portugal a favorable ecosystem for startups and innovation. Despite being a small country, it is not shy and is continuously looking at how to boost this ecosystem. We’ve hosted a Web Summit for many years, in addition to looking to host other worldwide big events, which brings Portugal to a central place in the world. This Investment Profile was prepared under the auspices of AICEP Portugal Global. For more information, please contact Carlos Moura at carlos.moura@portugalglobal.pt. Carlos Jesus, Vice President for Global Service Delivery and Country Manager, Colt Technology Services50 JANUARY 2025 SITE SELECTION Two Signs Of Malaysia’s Financial Center Ambitions W hen CNBC in summer 2024 named the world’s top 250 fintech companies, nearly half of them were based in the United States, followed by 30 in the United Kingdom, 11 in surging India and nine in fourth-place Singapore, certainly making the city-state No. 1 in top fintechs per capita. One of those Singaporean fintechs is making an ample investment in a financial hub in Singapore’s neighboring country Malaysia, a country which also is looking to develop a separate new financial center in an area referred to by some as a “ghost city” since COVID-19 slowed its development. First: After 10 years in the country, digital payments company Ant International, creator of the Alipay system, in April 2024 announced it would create as many as 500 new jobs in such areas as software development, data science, product design and risk control at a new office in the Tun Razak Exchange financial hub in Kuala Lumpur. “Tech and innovation are at the heart of Ant International,” said Ant International President Douglas Feagin, “and with the Malaysian government promoting tech skills development and positioning Malaysia as an innovation hub, we believe that together with partners like MDEC [Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation], we can harness local tech talents to significantly accelerate the impact that our businesses can make, locally and around the world.” The company also has signed an agreement with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to establish an entity in that country and use it as a gateway to what Feagin called “an enormous opportunity for expansion in the Middle East.” Meanwhile, at the Forest City development launched eight years ago in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, by China-based Country Garden Group, revisions to Malaysia’s My Second Home (MM2H) policy for special financial zones (SFZs) changed Forest City’s status from duty-free area to duty-free island. And Malaysia introduced new SFZ incentives that include a concessionary corporate tax of 0% for family offices, a special 5% rate for financial global business services, fintech and foreign payment system operators, and a special individual income tax rate of 15% for knowledge workers who choose to work there. In September remarks announcing the establishment of the Forest City Special Financial Zone (FCSFZ), Malaysian Minister of Finance II YB Senator Datuk Seri Amir Hamzah Azizan said among the various sectors the new zone seeks to attract, “fintech also holds significant importance for Malaysia’s future economic development. Forest City aims to create an environment conducive to the growth of fintech, focusing on areas such as regulatory technology [RegTech] and insurtech.” As for the zone’s ambitions overall, he said, “Forest City with its combination of a duty-free island within a special financial zone presents a unique proposition as a catalyst for economic development in the southern region of Malaysia, anchored on innovative financial services. Through robust participation by local and international stakeholders, it has the potential to drive growth from Johor into the rest of the ASEAN region. It also has the potential to mature into a globally recognized financial hub, the likes of Shenzhen in China and Dubai International Financial Centre in the UAE.” by ADAM BRUNS adam.bruns@siteselection.com FINTECH The view from Raffles Marina in Singapore shows the proximity of buildings in Forest City in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, across the water. Photo: Getty ImagesT he rankings on these pages are high-level measures of states’ workforce development climates. ey do not refl ect which states in a region have the most eff ective workforce training programs or labor boards or tools for connecting job seekers with potential employment opportunities. Rather they recognize states that performed well in a set of measures that can be applied to all states, measures that gauge workforce-related aspects of states’ overall employment climate. Analysis of variables on the ground, such as programs and resources for job seekers, are still the best way for companies with signifi cant hiring plans to factor workforce development into their site searches. ese rankings might serve as a starting point. e components used to assemble these rankings are: () CNBC’s America’s Top States for Business, Workforce and Education sub-ranking; () U.S. News’ Best States for Education ranking; () ACT National Career Readiness Certifi cates for ; () Strada Education Foundation Return on Investment; and () whether or not a state has at least one fi nancial incentive program in state policy for work-based learning according to the Education Commission of the States’ September -State Comparison analysis. by MARK AREND mark.arend@siteselection.com WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT RANKINGS SITE SELECTION JANUARY 2025 51 The 2025 Regional Workforce Development Rankings Northeast 2025 2024 New Hampshire 1 5 Vermont 2 3 Connecticut 3 2 New Jersey 4 1 Rhode Island 5 8 Pennsylvania 6 7 Massachusetts 7 4 New York 8 6 Maine 9 952 JANUARY 2025 SITE SELECTION South Central 2025 2024 Tennessee 1 3 Kentucky 2 7 Mississippi 3 4 Arkansas 4 1 Alabama 5 2 Louisiana 6 5 Oklahoma 7 8 Texas 8 6 West North Central 2025 2024 Iowa 1 1 Kansas 2 2 South Dakota 3 4 Nebraska 4 5 Minnesota 5 3 North Dakota 6 7 Missouri 7 6 South Atlantic 2025 2024 North Carolina 1 1 Florida 2 2 West Virginia 3 7 Virginia 4 3 Maryland 5 5 Georgia 6 6 South Carolina 7 8 Delaware 8 4 East North Central 2025 2024 Wisconsin 1 4 Illinois 2 1 Indiana 3 3 Michigan 4 2 Ohio 5 5 SITE SELECTION JANUARY 2025 53 Pacifi c 2025 2024 California 1 1 Washington 2 2 Oregon 3 3 Hawaii 4 4 Alaska 5 5 Mountain 2025 2024 Colorado 1 1 Utah 2 3 Idaho 3 2 Montana 4 5 New Mexico 5 4 Wyoming 6 6 Nevada 7 7 Arizona 8 8INVESTMENT PROFILE: VIRGINIA Transformational Opportunity Arrives in Southern Virginia R ealizing a promising opportunity requires a level of commitment equal to the promise — commitment of time, belief, work, capital and people. In Southern Virginia, years of commitment have opened the door to an unprecedented opportunity to lead the nation’s clean-tech manufacturing resurgence and energy transition. Battery separator manufacturer Microporous LLC in November announced it would invest $. billion and create more than , jobs on a portion of the ,-acre Southern Virginia Megasite near Danville in Pittsylvania County, where over $ million has been invested in site infrastructure over the years. e operation will manufacture coated lithium-ion battery separators for use primarily in the high-demand areas of electric vehicles and energy storage. “At the end of the day, Virginia just blew us away,” says Microporous CEO John Reeves in an interview from the company’s headquarters in Piney Flats, Tennessee, alongside Vice President of Corporate Development Brad Reed. “ e local folks were the diff erentiator.” Fifty-three years ago, Microporous became a diff erentiator as an anchor employer along a new stretch of road in its home state. In its new Virginia home in November, a new stretch of road — Harville-Saunders Parkway, completing Route and providing direct access to the megasite — opened for business the day before Microporous announced it would be an anchor once again. e network of people, sites and programs from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP), counties, cities, utilities and schools off ers the most reassuring infrastructure of all. Microporous will be eligible to receive a special appropriation of up to $. million approved by the General Assembly’s Major Employment and Investment Project Approval Commission, subject to approval by the Virginia General Assembly. e Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission, which has invested nearly $ million in the Southern Virginia Megasite since , approved up to $ million in low-interest fi nancing to bring natural gas service to the project. e company also can apply for grants from the Port of Virginia. Support for the project also is coming from Pittsylvania County, the City of Danville and the Southern Virginia Regional Alliance. Turnaround At Hand How did the company land in an by ADAM BRUNS adam.bruns@siteselection.com 54 JANUARY 2025 SITE SELECTIONarea that’s seen its share of hard times? Partly because of those hard times, Reeves explains. “It really started as we were focused on what the U.S. government is doing — and what the Chinese government has been doing for decades: incentivizing strategic industries,” Reed says. e company fi led application No. for grant money under the Advanced Energy Manufacturing and Recycling program created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and administered by the U.S. Department of Energy. Among its requirements? Placing production in an area whose economy has been aff ected by the closure of a coal mine or of a power plant fueled by coal. e teamwork evident in the assembly and improvement of the megasite was just as evident in the building of that application. A forum held about a year ago saw between and organizations from Pittsylvania County and neighboring counties convene to discuss recruiting and development strategy and capabilities, Reed says. “One thing the DOE grant program looks for is local community development plans, which make up % of the grant application,” he says. Letters of support from of those organizations went a long way toward the company’s application being looked on favorably, he says. Microporous was selected for a $ million grant. “At the groundbreaking, I asked each of those organizations to stand and it was almost half the room,” Reed says, noting the company is committing $, to a grant program for community development projects. Danville is already redeveloping quite well, revitalizing its downtown and building on a technically and mechanically savvy talent pool driven in part by a Department of Defense contract that sent people there for training in the nuclear- powered Navy. When the search was underway for a location, it quickly narrowed to North Carolina and Virginia, Reed says. “What solidifi ed Virginia over North Carolina was the signifi cant investment they’ve already made in the infrastructure at the megasite,” he says, “and the unparalleled job recruitment investment they’d already made.” Reeves says the idea of adding capacity was launched during the COVID- outbreak. “Planning, fi nding and hiring people and getting people trained was a real challenge,” Reeves says. “ e notion of hiring , people for this new facility was pretty daunting.” VEDP’s highly praised Virginia Talent Accelerator Program eased the worry. e Microporous executives had only to look at what the program did for the LEGO Group at its billion-dollar manufacturing project in Chesterfi eld County just south of Richmond. “Within just hours of the announcement, the Talent Accelerator had accumulated over , highly interested candidates in a database linked to the website they custom-built for LEGO,” Reeves says. “Instead of talking about it or saying it’s on the way, they have examples they can point to.” Carl Quesinberry, senior director of Avison Young Industrial Occupier Services, verifi es the upgraded talent approach: “ e workforce development programs have been greatly enhanced in Virginia,” he says, noting the Commonwealth’s strong network of community colleges. “ ese programs are huge diff erentiators for states.” “VEDP and the Talent Accelerator have already launched a new job recruitment website” for Microporous, Reed says. e site notes that of the , roles at the new operation will be high-paying maintenance technology roles for which applicants can apply now to be qualifi ed through a partnership with Danville Community College. Reeves adds that the labor shed within a -mile radius of Danville stretches into the northern part of Greensboro, North Carolina, and into Martinsville. “ ere are several hundred thousand people you can reach,” he says. “Our wage rate is about % higher than the average. e demographics are such that the people are there.” Momentum in Southern Virginia and the Commonwealth has continued since the November project announcement. Cambridge Pavers, Inc. will invest $. million to establish a new -job manufacturing facility at Ringgold East Industrial Park in Pittsylvania County, which beat out locations in fi ve other states. And Governor Glenn Youngkin pledged an additional $ million investment in his budget “to accelerate Virginia’s position as a national leader in business-ready site development.” e $ million investment in will build upon the over $ million previously committed to site development statewide. “Investing in project-ready sites is essential for Virginia to achieve its transformational economic development goals,” said VEDP President and CEO Jason El Koubi, “including positioning the Commonwealth as a leading state for job growth while enabling every region of Virginia to participate in that progress.” SITE SELECTION JANUARY 2025 55 This Investment Profile has been prepared under the auspices of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership. For more information, visit www.vedp.org. The Southern Virginia Megasite has attracted a megaproject in the form of a $1.35 billion, 2,000-job investment from Microporous. All images courtesy of VEDP and Microporous LLCTechnology Grows Here Too New horizons on Canada’s western frontier. E ight years ago, an artifi cial intelligence startup founded in Saskatoon by graduates of the University of Saskatchewan was acquired for an undisclosed sum by Siemens, the storied and far- fl ung German technology giant. Less than a decade later, the burgeoning R&D facility that emerged from the sale is a Siemens “Center of Excellence” for electronic design automation, one of only three worldwide under Siemens’ expansive umbrella. And that’s in ... Saskatoon? “Yeah, I think people are bemused about that,” says Aaron Genest, a senior manager at Siemens Electronic Design. “And I won’t lie, we kind of enjoy surprising people with it.” As if to underline the point, Genest — a holdover from the original Solido Design Automation, founded in Saskatoon in , years before the Siemens acquisition — says he can gaze in any direction from Siemens’ fi ve-story facility at Saskatoon’s Innovation Place technology park and see nothing but agriculture. “It’s very fl at here,” he says. “Very beautiful.” It’s true that prairies, plains, wetlands and forests dominate the vast landscapes of Western Canada. It’s also true that agriculture, mining, energy and forestry continue to drive the western economies. But as the Siemens story suggests, the technology bug more closely associated with Canada’s eastern provinces has found places to burrow and thrive in Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba and British Columbia. With concerted backing from provincial governments, new trails are being blazed along Canada’s western frontier across fi elds as complex as quantum computing, machine learning, AI, clean energy, aquaculture, aerospace and other vital technology sectors. Saskatchewan: Dare to Dream A study released in September by Innovation Saskatchewan, an arm of the provincial government, found that technology accounted for % of all job creation in the province from to , higher than any sector other than mining. On average, the report states, the tech sector added new jobs per year and is on track to exceed the province’s target of tripling the tech workforce by . e study identifi ed technology companies province-wide, of which were founded in the past fi ve years. is in a province of give or take . million people. “ e report highlights how Saskatchewan has developed a business-friendly tech ecosystem that is accelerating new technologies, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and creating new employment opportunities,” said Minister for Innovation Jeremy Harrison. “ is substantial growth in the province’s tech sector is a direct result of government and industry working collaboratively to support innovative technologies.” Solido, now Siemens, was instrumental in by GARY DAUGHTERS gary.daughters@siteselection.com WESTERN CANADA 56 JANUARY 2025 SITE SELECTION Winter on a prairie in Saskatchewan Photo by mysticenergy: Getty ImagesNext >