The Kansas City area has the highest concentration of animal health companies found anywhere in the world, as more than 115 companies in this sector call the greater K.C. area home.

Reser's Fine Foods opened its $35- million new plant in East Topeka earlier this year. The 200,000- sq.- ft. (18,580- sq.- m.) facility eventually will introduce 175 new employees to the 700 people who already work for Reser's in Topeka.

Four of the 10 leading companies in the global animal health industry are headquartered in this metro. K.C. area companies account for 27 percent of total U.S. sales and 30 percent of global sales in the $14.2 billion animal health market.
   Quintiles, a global leader in pharmaceutical services, announced earlier this year that it would build a new facility in Overland Park to house the clinical development services, clinical pharmacology units and clinical research centers of the company in Lenexa. The expansions will add 200 workers to the 700- person payroll.
   "This new facility will give us the extra capacity we need while also increasing efficiency by bringing together all of our operations in the region," said Dennis Gillings, chairman and CEO of Quintiles. "Since coming to the greater Kansas City area in the 1990s, we have enjoyed the support of the business community as well as the outstanding performance of a highly skilled group of employees."
   The company, which has 16,000 employees in 50 countries, expects to begin moving into the new, four- story, 236,000- sq.- ft. (21,924- sq.- m.) facility late this year.
   Other recent projects in Overland Park include ADP, which added 100 workers at the College Oaks A Building; QC Holdings, which added 300 jobs and 38,000 sq. ft. (3,530 sq. m.); and ProPharma, which moved recently to Corporate Woods.
   High- tech firms aren't the only companies making headlines in Kansas. Seven of the 10 largest facility investments announced in Kansas in 2006 are ethanol plants, including the top six.
   Burns & McDonnell announced in August that it had been hired by a group in northeast Kansas to engineer a $122- million biodiesel and ethanol plant. The Kansas City- based engineering firm will cooperate with German manufacturer and equipment provider Westfalia Separator AG to build the plant near Hiawatha, Kan.
   Called Northeast Kansas Bioenergy LLC, the plant will produce 50 million gallons of ethanol and 30 million gallons of biodiesel fuel per year. The site was selected due to its close proximity to feedstock.
   "It's in an area where you have ample supplies of corn," said Scott McDermott, a partner at Ascendant Partners Inc. of Greenwood Village, Colo., the consulting firm managing the project. "You also have soybeans and livestock processing in the region."
   Another ethanol plant in southwest Kansas, capable of producing 55 million gallons a year, broke ground in May in Garden City in Finney County. The project by Conestoga Energy Partners represents an $85- million capital investment and will create up to 40 full- time jobs. The company also announced a $160- million ethanol plant to be built in Hayne.
   Combined, the seven new ethanol plants coming to Kansas represent capital investment of $843 million.
   Even those projects pale in comparison, however, to the planned $1.2- billion coal- powered electric plant near Holcomb. Hays- based Sunflower Electric Power Co. announced in July that it will build the 700- megawatt plant between 2007 and 2011.
   Kansas also figures to benefit from defense contractor investments over the next few years. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a $378- billion defense appropriations bill in late September that includes $14.8 billion in programs with connections to south central Kansas.