Giving Back

DuPont announced on June 29 its plan to open new global Innovation Centers, with the first in the Asia Pacific. A center in Korea will service the electronics and automotive industries, while another in Taiwan will focus on the electronics and communications markets. Beginning in autumn, new Innovation Centers in Thailand and India also will be ready to collaborate with customers around renewable energy initiatives and innovations. Additional Innovation Centers are planned in Latin America, Europe and North America.

"The global population has grown to 7 billion, generating great need for food, energy and protection," said Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer Thomas M. Connelly. "We realize that meeting these needs will require more than science. Globally, we are committed to leading collaborative and inclusive innovations to respond to the challenges facing the world today. Collaboration is the driving force behind establishing these country-focused Innovation Centers."

n April 3M purchased purchased DuPont's former Advanced Composite Technology (ACT) facility on Swinging Bridge Road in Nashville, Tenn., in order to open a new manufacturing facility for a line of healthcare and home care products. The plant will hire 40 people over three years.

n August 1, Caterpillar announced that it plans to open a new manufacturing facility in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, China, to produce undercarriage components and track assemblies used in Cat's hydraulic excavators, which are manufactured at an adjacent plant. Construction and modifications to pre-existing buildings will commence in 2011, with production scheduled for mid-2012. The 18,000 sq.-m. (193,750-sq.-ft.) facility will be located in the Xuzhou Economic Development Zone, and will employ approximately 400 people when fully operational and at full capacity.

Cat also is beefing up its U.K. headcount at its factory in Peterlee thanks to a resurgence in orders, after having drawn down its payroll in 2009. The company has recruited 100 agency staff in 2011 and expects to recruit 100 more, all in addition to 250 workers recruited in 2010. The company plans to invest approximately $8 million in the plant as part of an overall $145-million-per-year development program. The Peterlee plant is the worldwide source of six models of Caterpillar Articulated Trucks, primarily used in the aggregate and mining industries.

Elsewhere, the company is investing $213.2 million to modernize its plant in Gosselies, Belgium. And back in the U.S., the company announced in late June it would create at least 200 jobs and invest $120 million in machinery, equipment and upgrades to the existing facility at its Griffin Engine Center in Spalding County, Ga., just south of Atlanta. The county is also home to Cat's Perkins engine facility.

wo Weyerhaeuser plants in Lowndes County, Miss., will receive more than $66 million in modernization investment over the next two years. The two pulp plants, which employ 430 people, have been approved for more than $21 million in tax exemptions over the next 10 years related to the new projects.

ASF has chosen to build a new plant for customer-specific antioxidant blends (CSB) in Bahrain. CSBs are key additives for the production of polymers for the plastics industry, particularly for the Middle East region. Construction of the new facility will begin in September 2011 and it will become operational by the end of 2012. Hans W Reiners, president of BASF's Performance Chemicals division, said, "We are very happy to establish a state-of-the-art CSB production site close to our customers in this fast growing region. This is backed by our powerful production network of antioxidants in Asia, Europe and the Americas."

ven as it continues major job cuts in line with its post-merger restructuring goals following the acquisition of Schering Plough, Merck & Co. continues to grow in strategic locations. In late July Merk Animal Health announced it was investing $18 million and doubling capacity of its tissue culture department at the vaccine manufacturing unit at its Biosciences Center Boxmeer campus in the Netherlands. The new facility is scheduled to be fully operational by early 2013. In 2010, the tissue culture department produced 12 different antigens, totaling almost 300 million vaccine doses for cattle, horses, dogs, cats, fish and swine. The largest biotech site in the Netherlands with more than 500 employees, the Boxmeer site manufactures more than 100 licensed vaccines, out of 350 marketed by the company as a whole.

On the same day, Merck & Co. (known as MSD outside the U.S. and Canada) and China's Simcere Pharmaceutical Group announced the signing of a framework agreement to establish a joint venture focused on serving China's rapidly expanding health care needs by providing significantly improved access to quality medicines in major therapeutic areas. "This partnership between Simcere and Merck is not only strategically significant for both organizations, but also a landmark event for Jiangsu's biopharmaceutical industry," said Zhijun Luo, secretary of China's Jiangsu Provincial Committee.

erck is not alone in eyeing the China opportunity. One month earlier, Johnson & Johnson Medical (Suzhou) Ltd announced it has established an innovation center in China to design and develop medical devices and diagnostic products specifically for Asia's emerging markets, primarily focusing on China and India. "Johnson & Johnson products touch around 1 billion people every day," said Alex Gorsky, vice chairman of the executive committee of Johnson & Johnson. "The important question is how do we help the next billion, many of whom live in Asia where health care needs are intensifying?"

The center is the latest addition to the Johnson & Johnson campus in the Suzhou Industrial Park. The 278,000-sq.-m. (3-million-sq.-ft.) site also contains a DePuy manufacturing plant which began operation in 2007 and a global finance shared services center opened in 2010 to provide general accounting services to the Johnson & Johnson companies in north Asia.  Investment in the site to date totals $115 million.

n late July, Hickey & Associates, LLC, a global site location and public/private advisory firm based in Minneapolis, announced its merger with HartsGroup, Inc., a multi-disciplinary consulting firm serving corporate clients in the Americas from its base in Kansas City, Kan. "The combined organization will draw on the talented group of leaders from both companies, and greatly enhance the collective effort to provide advisory services in strategic Latin American markets," said a news release. The HartsGroup will continue to service all existing clients and ongoing projects. Future projects will be serviced under the new Hickey & Associates, LLC brand.