New Member Companies Making Big Impact Globally

Nucor Steel Berkeley in South Carolina
Photo courtesy of Nucor

By ADAM BRUNS

One of the reasons the March issue of Site Selection is among the most highly anticipated of the year every year is it’s the first opportunity to collate projects from the previous calendar year that qualified for the Conway Projects Database.

For those unfamiliar with this proprietary database, it is populated by corporate end-user facility projects our staff finds around the world that involve construction and fulfill any of three criteria: at least $1 million invested; at least 20 new jobs created; or at least 20,000 new sq. ft. of space. The data from these qualifying projects sit at the heart of many of Site Selection’s rankings and indices published throughout the year, including the Governor’s Cup, Top Metros, Top Micropolitans, Top Industries and Mississippi River Corridor rankings found in this issue.

As the issue arrives at the same time as IAMC’s annual report, project data from IAMC Corporate Active member companies show that they were engaged in 486 facility investment projects around the world involving at least $62.8 billion invested and at least 72,848 new jobs.

That’s a whole lot of economic activity. It only gets more impressive when you consider the 45 companies whose leaders joined IAMC in 2023.

I asked Site Selection Director of Programming & Analytics Daniel Boyer and Data Services Manager Karen Medernach to run those 45 company names through our database going back to January 2022. They found more than 150 facility investment projects affiliated with those companies over the past two years.

Here is a highlight reel:

An array of continuing investment in U.S. steel production from Nucor includes investments at its mill in Berkeley, South Carolina (pictured); and at sites in West Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Indiana and Arizona. In September 2023, Nucor announced a collaboration with fusion power company Helion to develop a 500-MW fusion power plant that will offer baseload zero-carbon electricity from fusion directly to a Nucor steelmaking facility. “Nucor and Helion are working together to set a firm timeline and are committed to beginning operations as soon as possible with a target of 2030,” the companies announced. “Nucor is making a direct investment of $35 million in Helion to accelerate fusion deployment in the United States. This is the first fusion energy agreement of this scale in the world and will pave the way for decarbonizing the entire industrial sector.”

New Albany City Council in Indiana approved community reinvestment area (CRA) agreements in October 2023 for Kansas-based QTS Data Centers, “which will allow the company to invest roughly $1.5 billion in four data centers for future end users,” the city announced. “Data centers are key assets to the New Albany community, allowing us to diversify the types of companies within our business portfolio,” said Sara Zeigler, economic development manager for the City of New Albany. “QTS has a great track record of being invested in the communities where they have built facilities. The company’s core values align closely with ours, and we’re excited that they are choosing to call New Albany home.”

For those who still think data centers don’t produce enough ROI to merit pursuit, the city went on to explain that New Albany’s negotiated revenue structure with data centers “produces the same amount of revenue that the city would typically receive in income tax for Class A office sites. Data centers create significant local revenue and high-quality jobs for the community with minimal impact on city services, traffic or the school population.”

Investment projects from 3M have landed in such varied locations as Zwijndrecht, Belgium (Antwerp region); Denton, Texas; Ames, Iowa; and Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. Multiple facilities in Europe are part of a $146 million, 60-job expansion in biopharma filtration. One of the company’s biggest projects is a $470 million, 600-job investment in Clinton, Tennessee, part of the Knoxville metro region, where the company first acquired the plant in 2014. As part of the expansion, 3M plans is investing in two of its fast-growing product lines: Filtrete™ air filters and Command™ Brand adhesive strips.

“The talented people in East Tennessee, the partnership from the state government, and the flexibility of our manufacturing facility create an ideal environment for additional investment in Clinton,” said 3M Chairman and CEO Mike Roman in January 2022. “The continued demand for innovative new 3M products, especially for home improvement, makes us optimistic about our growth in Clinton.”

L3Harris Technologies has been living out its slogan — “Fast. Forward.” — by investing in projects in the UAE; Bologna, Italy; Poland; Fort Wayne, Indiana; and multiple cities in its home state of Texas (Waco, Plano and Richardson). Among its expansions is a modernized Aerojet Rocketdyne facility in Huntsville, Alabama, to support the LGM-35A Sentinel program (pictured), formerly known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, which will replace the nation’s current Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile System and serve as a key deterrent to promote global security.

Image courtesy of L3 Harris Technologies

Projects from container logistics and shipping company Maersk and A.P. Moller-Maersk have dotted the globe in such locations as Chittagong and Gujarat, India; Egypt; Karachi, Pakistan; Dubai, Singapore, Cameroon, Netherlands and Panama. The newest was announced at press time, as the company opened a cold chain facility at the Ruakura Superhub in New Zealand, “solidifying Hamilton as a key touch point within the Golden Triangle for freighting and logistics in New Zealand.” The company said the facility “will be well utilized by New Zealand’s largest dairy company, Fonterra, supporting their North Island production,” as well as other food companies. “New Zealand has long played a vital role in the global supply chain from dairy, meat to seafood and fruits, the primary industry sector to drive the development of country’s economy,” said Vincent Clerc, CEO of A.P. Moller-Maersk, noting the company’s 27 years of doing business there. The company has partnered with local iwi (tribe) Waikato-Tainui as owners of the land on which the Ruakura Superhub sits. “Through the partnership, Maersk has made a significant social investment into the region through job creation and providing Waikato-Tainui with logistics and supply-chain training systems to upskill those in the community wishing to take up a career in logistics.”

Nestlé projects have been rising or expanding in such places as Ukraine, Serbia, Spain, Brazil, Mexico and Australia as well as U.S. sites in California’s Inland Empire, South Florida and Anderson, Indiana. Among the company’s facility activities, its CARNATION dairy processing facility in Modesto, California, is undergoing re-certification for the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) Standard, a comprehensive global standard that recognizes responsible water stewardship across social, cultural, environmental and economic criteria. Last spring, the company announced it is investing in Ganado, a 1,500-acre solar project owned and developed by Enel North America in Jackson County, Texas. With Nestlé’s investment, the solar project will add 208 MWdc of solar electricity to the U.S. grid. Nestlé also will purchase 100% of the renewable electricity attributes generated by the project’s energy production, estimated to be an average of 333,000 megawatt hours per year for 15 years. “This renewable electricity will help Nestlé reduce carbon emissions in many of its U.S. facilities,” the company said.