Investment Profile

The Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA) is leading new efforts to facilitate foreign direct investment into key industry sectors in order to meet objectives set forth in the Economic Transformation Programme by 2020. The plan stresses increased investment in several sectors that will help transform Malaysia into a higher-income economy complete with the infrastructure and labor supply necessary to sustain the target sectors into the future.

From automotive manufacturing to the chemicals and life-sciences sectors, few factors are more important to global competitiveness than speed to market. In fact, for some industrial companies, the presence of a superior transportation and logistics network is the most critical component of all. In Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, logistics is at the heart of the state’s business growth strategy — and a world-class transportation network is the driver.

Today Ak-Chin Indian Community and business leaders are reclaiming land. But their eyes are on the bright path to the future, as they seek to foster enterprise instead of entitlement.

Greater Fort Lauderdale alters perceptions of business executives around the world. Payoff comes in headquarters, plants and other expansions including a British tobacco company.

A recent investment by Spirit AeroSystems at the North Carolina Global TransPark in Kinston is paving the way for a local aerospace cluster that could soon number in the thousands of workers. No other location had GTP’s blend of logistics and work-force attributes, says a Spirit executive central to the location decision.

Workforce development programs make San Bernardino County a manufacturing magnet in Southern California. When California Steel Industries’ Brett Guge explains why his company invested nearly a billion dollars into operations in San Bernardino County, he attributes his firm’s strategic direction to one primary factor.

The Southwest Louisiana and Acadiana region supplies energy to the world and skilled workers for expanding companies. Take the elements that are critical to community prosperity — water, transportation, energy, industrial know-how, and willing and able workers — and combine them into a strategy for economic success … that is exactly what Southwest Louisiana and Acadiana did.

Located in beautiful Izmir, one of the principal cities on the Mediterranean Sea and Turkey's primary port for exports, ESBAS is home to global powerhouses like Hugo Boss, Fokker Elmo, Pratt & Whitney, PFW, Delphi Diesel, Gates, Mahle, Delphi Packard, Eldor Electronics, Aero and Cummins Inc. Together the companies located within ESBAS generate more than US$5 billion annually in manufacturing and trade.

Centuries of innovation cement Thuringia as leader in advanced manufacturing. Bosch Solar Energy AG has more than tripled the size of its work force here in only three years.

Mars Chocolate North America likes to say that “Snickers really satisfies.” The 100-year-old confectionary company may soon be saying that “Topeka really satisfies Mars.”
The city of Topeka, Kan., received a sweet treat of its own when Mars announced a $250-million, 200-job plant investment in the capital community.

German engineering is well known and highly regarded in the extremely competitive world of automotive manufacturing.

Executives at small and mid-sized companies assigned the task of opening a Shanghai office or facility might find that assignment daunting if it’s the company’s first foray into the Chinese market.

North Carolina Biotechnology: From Dream to Reality

Few locations in China can claim as many benefits to industrial investors as the Changzhou National Hi-Tech District (CND) established in November 1992 on the northern side of the city of Changzhou.

The biggest breakthrough in fighting the global battle against diabetes didn’t come in a lab in San Diego, Boston or one of the other well-known U.S. life-science clusters.

In Florida and the Carolinas, Progress Energy’s network ties various groups together to get deals done.

“They always seem to be there when we need them,” says Jim E. Mentesti, president of the Great River Economic Development Foundation (GREDF) in Quincy and Adams County, Ill., when asked about his community’s partnership with Ameren Corporation.

Just nine years remain before Vision 2020 — Malaysia’s blueprint for achieving fully industrialized status — is to take effect. Former Prime Minister Tun Mahathir Mohamad set the Southeast Asian nation of 28 million people on the Vision 2020 course in 1991, complete with nine strategic societal challenges to be overcome in order to become fully developed by the end of the decade.

Even as Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman pushes legislation to advance business innovation and work-force recruitment, his state is showing signs of harvesting the kind of talented entrepreneurs he envisions.

With a seemingly endless string of disasters plaguing the world in the last year, most notably the massive earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan, images of the devastating floods that swept across much of Queensland, Australia, have faded from memory for most not directly affected.

Three unique location assets form the foundation of future economic development in the capital region of Kansas.

To understand how rapidly the chemical and plastics manufacturing sectors are changing in Germany, all you have to do is talk to Ralf Irmert.

Only a handful of Midwestern states offer companies the logistics advantage of a northern water route via the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean and a southern water route via the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to the Gulf of Mexico.

The founder of AutoNation, Extended Stay America and Waste Management Inc. enjoys his daily commute. He likes the view from his South Florida office even better.