Investor Watch: April 14, 2025

SEGRO and Pure Data Centres pursue a 56-MW data center in Park Royal. AstraZeneca’s second Chinese R&D center will be its sixth overall. Goodyear’s largest manufacturing facility in the world will expand in Lawton, Oklahoma.

PACIFIC NORTHWEST

Hydroelectricity helps deliver the EV revolution to central Washington.

MARYLAND

Portraits of industries and regions emerge from Site Selection’s 2024 corporate facility project data.

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Nokia Bell Labs’ H-2 at HELIX in New Brunswick, New Jersey, will be Nokia’s new R&D lab on the East Coast.
Rendering courtesy of Nokia

Last month, Aspire program tax credits were approved by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) Board for the second New Jersey Health + Life Science Exchange’s (HELIX) building in New Brunswick, known as H-2. Nokia Bell Labs, the industrial research arm of Nokia, will serve as the main tenant of the 10-story, nearly 370,000-sq.-ft. building, an NJEDA release stated. The first phase of the HELIX was approved for Aspire tax credits in 2023.

The news followed a February NJEDA announcement that it will partner with Nokia Bell Labs to launch a Strategic Innovation Center (SIC) consisting of the NJ Nokia Innovation Center and Bell Labs Venture Studio, both to be located at H-2. “Both components will be focused on enabling startups to accelerate and commercialize intellectual property from Nokia Bell Labs and local universities,” the February announcement said, “with an emphasis in the fields of communication, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and optical and wireless networks.”

Nokia’s move into HELIX was first covered in “Innovation Destination,” an Investment Profile of Middlesex County in the July 2024 of Site Selection. That issue’s New Jersey Spotlight was titled, “The Garden State’s Support for Innovators Is SIC.”

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The OBRIST Group envisions a future energy system that includes 3,000 methanol-producing “Gigaplants.”
Image courtesy of the OBRIST Group

In response to geopolitical upheaval, German-Austrian industrial group the OBRIST Group last month unveiled a vision of a globally organized methanol economy for energy supply based on a “Gigaplant” solar park concept that would reinforce European autonomy and competitiveness, with OBRIST Group Chief Marketing Officer Thorsten Rixmann calling a global methanol economy, built and operated by Europe, “the best way to supply Europe with baseload-capable, competitive and sustainable energy.”

Since methanol can be produced from solar energy but, unlike hydrogen, is liquid at normal conditions, it can therefore be transported via existing global infrastructure, the idea goes. But since solar radiation intensity is better near the equator than in Europe, large-scale methanol production facilities should be cooperatively built and operated in African and Middle Eastern countries under EU leadership, the company says, describing a vision of “a thriving economy in African countries, which, thanks to Gigaplants, could develop into a hub for global energy supply. For the countries in the Middle East, methanol production would enable a gradual transition away from oil extraction. ‘Oil will eventually run out, but the sun will shine forever,’ said Rixmann.

The vision statement followed news last year that OBRIST had signed licensing agreements for its technology that will enable the company and its partners to pursue the goal of “implementing Obrist technologies in definitive projects in Namibia, Egypt, Thailand and the United States. An investment volume in the double-digit billion-euro range has already been secured in these countries. The projects will be implemented in the coming months,” with the U.S. target in the field of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).

While the company’s concept includes calculations proving economic viability, OBRIST also maintains that “around 3,000 Gigaplants would be needed to fully replace the use of fossil fuels with methanol. The total cost for building these clean energy factories would amount to nearly $50 trillion dollars. “This is a big goal, but it is achievable step by step,” said Rixmann. “The current global situation would be a good reason for the European Union to quickly take the first step and launch two or three Gigaplants in different countries.”

Photo courtesy of Boyd Sports; sculpture by Brian Hanlon of Hanlon Sculpture Studio

Tomorrow when Covenant Health Park in Knoxville, Tennessee, hosts Opening Day of the Chicago Cubs affiliate the Knoxville Smokies at the team’s new ballpark, fans will see on the grounds seven statues recognizing the city’s Knoxville Giants, a Negro Southern League team that played at Booker T. Washington Park in East Knoxville from 1920 to 1932. This statue depicts Forrest “One Wing” Maddox, now recognized as the first amputee to play big-league baseball. A graduate and later professor at Atlanta’s Morehouse College before dying of complications from tuberculosis at age 31, he was a pitcher and outfielder for the Knoxville Giants in 1920.

“As an outfielder he amazes spectators by the dexterity with which he catches a ball with his one gloved hand, tosses it into the air, removes the glove and with lightning-like rapidity snatches the ball again and relays it to the infield,” read a 1921 account in the Washington Post cited in a recent article in Amplitude, a Colorado-based publication devoted to the stories of amputees.