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FROM SITE SELECTION
MAGAZINE, JANUARY 2023 ISSUE
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EMERGING TECH HUBS
A deep dive into national venture capital data reveals places beyond the
usual suspects that are achieving critical mass in tech.
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ASIA
Understanding President Xi Jinping’s vision for the country is to
understand China’s future, at least for the next five years.
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This 2017 photo of Samsung Nano City in Hwaseong, in Gyeonggi Province,
South Korea, shows the level of facility investment that can come from a
global patent leader.
Photo courtesy of Samsung
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Connecticut-based IFI CLAIMS Patent Services this week unveiled its 2022 U.S. Top 50 and IFI Global 250 patent
rankings, which tally total patents by company in the U.S. and
abroad. Samsung (6,248 patent grants), IBM, Taiwan Semiconductor
Manufacturing, Huawei Technologies and Canon top the U.S. rankings.
Samsung’s ascent to the top of the U.S. rankings marks the first time
since 1993 that a company other than IBM has occupied that slot. The
biggest upward mover by percent change in patents among the Top 10 is
Qualcomm, which rode a 22% increase in patents to a three-position jump
in the rankings to No. 7. U.S. patent grants issued in 2022 dropped to
their lowest level since 2018, said IFI, but “patent applications hit an
all-time high in 2022 as the United States emerged from the COVID-19
pandemic — a harbinger for a resurgence in innovation and grants over
the next one to two years.”
Rather than looking at the grants received in a single year, the Global
250, an ultimate owner ranking, presents the cumulative and active
technology holdings in an entity’s worldwide patent portfolio (including
subsidiaries and majority-owned companies) for a given year. Panasonic
is No. 1 with 94,341, followed by Samsung, Hitachi, the Chinese Academy
of Sciences and Canon. Nearly all of the Top 25 are based in Asia, with
the exceptions of No. 16 IBM and No. 22 Robert Bosch.
Site Selection’s Conway Projects Database shows 19 projects worldwide
from Samsung since January 2020, including large investments in Taylor,
Texas; Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India; and Vietnam. A total of 95 facility
investments with a cumulative capex of more than $150 billion have been
tracked since then from the U.S. Top 10 in patents, with published job
creation numbers from those projects (where available) totaling nearly
38,000. — Adam Bruns
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KANSAS — THE STATE OF
UNEXPECTED
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ELECTRIC VEHICLES & BATTERIES
The company’s $4 billion, 4,000-job plant in De Soto rides the edge of a
new wave of EV and battery innovation emerging from a region with a
heritage in battery materials and knowledge.
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INVESTMENT PROFILE: CITY OF RUSSELL
The community of Russell offers the perfect blend of a high quality of
life and opportunities for industry.
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CASE STUDY: SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA
Off the Grid Brewery, FabFitFun and Exquadrum are just a few of the
companies finding a competitive talent advantage thanks to the workforce
development resources they find in San Bernardino County.
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Delaware
In December, Delaware Prosperity Partnership announced that City
National Bank, “one of the largest West Coast banks that’s known as the
‘bank to the stars,’ ” is planning a major expansion in Delaware, as it
recently signed a lease for 30,000 sq. ft. in the Buccini/Pollin
Group-owned Iron Hill Corporate Center near Newark. The bank will grow
its headcount by more than 475% in adding 253 new positions over the
next few years. The bank was reportedly considering other sites along
the East Coast, said the Partnership, which has been working with City
National since July 2022 on the project. “Geography played an important
part to City National’s decision to come to Delaware,” said the release,
“as it is equidistant to the bank’s hubs in New York and Washington,
D.C., and close to the Philadelphia International Airport, which offers
direct flights to Los Angeles.” “We know the state very well,” said
Justin Rowley, a senior vice president at City National and a University
of Delaware graduate. “Many of the colleagues who work in our current
state office have long-term and tenured experience with the state of
Delaware. We know the talent and the university systems, and we know it
can uniquely support our expanding growth.”
South Africa
California-based digital infrastructure giant Equinix in December
announced plans to enter the South African market with a $160 million
data center investment in Johannesburg that augments its current
footprint on the African continent in Nigeria, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire
after its recent acquisition of West African data center company
MainOne. The new data center is expected to open mid-2024. “Already a
strategically important connectivity hub for digital networks, South
Africa boasts a significant network of submarine communications cables,”
the company said. “These strategic links between countries and
continents are established at several points across the country’s 2,850
kilometers of coastline.” Eugene Bergen, president, EMEA, at Equinix.,
said, “This investment will give both South African businesses the
opportunity to expand internationally and global businesses to expand
into South Africa.” The current Equinix footprint spans six continents,
32 countries, more than 70 markets and over 245 data centers. Arizton
reports that South Africa is the top data center market in Africa and
will witness investments of more than $3.2 billion by 2027, growing at a
CAGR of 11.15% during 2022–2027.
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SITE SELECTION
RECOMMENDS
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Prof. Yossi Sheffi, Director, MIT Center for
Transportation and Logistics
The fall edition of the Wilson Center’s Wilson Quarterly is all
about strengthening supply chains. Among the
dozen features in the issue is a piece on building resilient
supply chains featuring the perspective of Yossi Sheffi,
director of MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics, whose
insights have been featured in Site Selection multiple
times over the past decade and remain relevant.
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Photo by Zhonghui Yao courtesy of University of Oxford
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This photo showing the October 2022 water level in the Yangtze River
accompanied the release earlier this month of a new study from the University of Oxford’s
School of Geography that finds more than 90% of the world’s population
is projected to face increased risks from the compound impacts of
extreme heat and drought. According to co-author Dr. Jiabo Yin, a
visiting researcher from Wuhan University, the work has “wide-reaching
implications across the broad fields of sustainability, including
climate science, hydrology, ecology, water resources, and risk
assessment,” said an Oxford release.
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