Auto air conditioner supplier DENSO is progressing with construction on its 217,000-sq.-ft. (20,200-sq.-m.) plant in Osceola, Ark.

Auto Industry Suppliers
Pepper Region

Toyota's planned Tundra truck factory in San Antonio attracted its first supplier to Central Texas in the form of Tasus Corp., which will build in Georgetown, north of Austin on I-35. The company plans to open its 100,000-sq.-ft. (9,290-sq.-m.), $13.3-million plant in late 2004. The plastic part maker says it will employ 102 within five years. A subsidiary of Tsuchiya Co. of Nagoya, Japan, Tasus will also supply other customers in the region.
        In Arkansas, another Japanese firm, DENSO Corp., is building a 217,000-sq.-ft. (20,200-sq.-m.) plant in Osceola to manufacture car air conditioners and heavy equipment radiators. The facility will be DENSO's 23rd in North America and is scheduled to open in October 2004, with production beginning in January 2005.
        DENSO started its search by looking at 20 potential sites before picking Osceola. John Voorhorst, DENSO's vice president of external affairs, describes negotiations leading to the decision as intense, but civil.
        "Mayor [Dickie] Kennemore clearly understood the critical importance of the project to both the City of Osceola and Mississippi County," Voorhorst recalls. "Subsequently, he demonstrated significant creativity in developing an incentive package that directly responded to DENSO's stated requirements for the project. Mayor Kennemore's experience as an insurance and residential real estate agent was clearly a factor in his entrepreneurial approach to supporting the project. He clearly understood the community's role in keeping the project on schedule and on budget. He became a major player on the project team from the outset of the project, utilizing his political connections at both the state and federal level to DENSO's benefit."

SA Recoups Some High-Tech Losses Even with the coming Toyota plant, San Antonio was hit by both high-tech (Philips Semiconductor and Sony) and low-tech (Levi Strauss) closings in 2003. But the city ended the year on a high note with news that Maxim Integrated Products will invest $100 million in the former Philips Semiconductor wafer facility.         Philips shuttered the plant in September 2003, putting 520 employees out of work. Maxim, which manufactures integrated circuits and semiconductors, plans to create 600 jobs over the next several years.         The state is committing $1.5 million from the Texas Enterprise Fund to the project, contingent on a matching grant from the City of San Antonio.

        Voorhorst says Arkansas has gotten better of late in terms of developing creative, competitive incentives to lure projects. The availability of development land and reasonable costs also gives the state an advantage, he says.
        DENSO is attracting its own suppliers to the area. Systex Products Corp., a joint venture between Systex Japan and Cascade Engineering, is building a plant in Osceola that will open this fall to make injection-molded plastic parts for the air-conditioning systems Denso supplies. It will eventually employ about 40.
        Yet another Japan-based automotive firm, Sakae Riken Kogyo Co., is building in Arkansas, with a $15-million, 91,000-sq.-ft. (8,453-sq.-m.) plant in Wynne that will produce interior and exterior trim and modular assemblies. The company will initially employ 75, expanding later to 250. The plant will have capacity to produce 320,000 door handles and 60,000 mirrors per month.