Investor Watch: January 30, 2023 - Site Selection Magazine

FROM SITE SELECTION MAGAZINE, JANUARY 2023 ISSUE

MEGASITES

‘Proof Is in the Outcomes’

Site selectors weigh in on megasite development, plus an inside look at how one Alabama megasite lured its megaproject.

INVESTMENT PROFILE: CLECO POWER

Louisiana Industries’ Clean Energy Partner

Industrial energy consumers today require much more from their utilities than reliable and competitively priced power. Cleco Power and its reinvigorated economic development strategy aim to deliver.

KANSAS — THE STATE OF UNEXPECTED

AEROSPACE

All Systems Go

Kansas wields the history, infrastructure and smarts to make things fly.

PROJECT WATCH

France

This €300 million investment announced last year and expected to be complete by this month will increase polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) capacity at Solvay’s site in Tavaux to 35 kilotons – making it the largest PVDF production site in Europe to support the growth of the global lithium-ion battery market. Tavaux is located in the Jura department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in eastern France, near the Swiss border. PVDF is a thermoplastic fluoropolymer used as a lithium-ion binder and separator coating. The company also has increased PVDF capacity at its site in Changshu, China. And in November Solvay announced a JV with Orbia to create the largest capacity in North America for PVDF production. The total investment is estimated to be around $850 million, with part of that coming from a U.S. Department of Energy grant of $178 million to Solvay to build a facility in Augusta, Georgia. However, Solvay and Orbia said they intend to use two production sites, “one for raw materials and the other for finished product, located in the southeastern United States,” with both plants are expected to be fully operational by 2026. Of all the global PVDF expansions, Ilham Kadri, CEO of Solvay, said, “These investments extend our ambition to grow global sales to the automotive market from €800 million in 2021 to over €3 billion by 2030.”

Source: Conway Projects Report

Switzerland

In September the superstructure of CDMO ten23 health’s new large-scale sterile production facility was completed in Visp, Switzerland, as the plant is on track to be operational in 2024 for global commercial supplies of injectable drugs, said the company. The facility will have two sterile production lines and a total of 5,000 sq. m. (53,821 sq. ft.) of space to provide an additional 30+ million units/year of fill and finish commercial as well as clinical capacity. “A unique feature of the new facility is photovoltaic façade, covering the complete building exteriors, and being able to provide 45,000 kW per year,” the company said, in keeping with ten23 health’s facilities in Basel and Visp, which already operate with 100% renewable energy. Where did the company get its name? “The numeric value for the number of molecules in a sample of one mol is called the Avogadro constant and equals 6.022 * 10 23,” the company explains. “The world is built from small units, and not a homogeneous mass.” Good to know.

Source: Conway Projects Report

SITE SELECTION RECOMMENDS

Austin’s No. 1 ranking as a smart city is helped by its high level of tech infrastructure and green infrastructure, says ProptechOS.

Photo by Carlos Alfonso on Unsplash courtesy of ProptechOS

You’ve read in Site Selection’s pages how global experts define smart cities and how cities can execute a smart city strategy. Now comes a new smart city index from ProptechOS that uses 11 indicators to reveal which cities are “best prepared for a smarter future.” Austin narrowly tops Los Angeles in the U.S. Top 10, while London wins by a healthy margin over Amsterdam in the index’s European ranking.

WORKFORCE 2023

INDUSTRY PARTNERSHIP: MISSOURI

Springfield, MO, Wants to Serve You and 51 Other Counties

The Quadra-Regional Workforce Alliance will push $17.5 million into 51 southern Missouri counties over the next three years.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

Photo by Piotr Traczyk courtesy of CERN

This photograph from the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN from its French-driven acronym) shows a High Temperature Superconducting (HTS) rare-earth barium copper oxide (also referred to as REBCO) power transmission cable used to study the feasibility of superconductivity for aircraft. In December CERN and Airbus UpNext, a wholly owned subsidiary of Airbus, announced they had launched a collaboration to explore the potential use of superconducting technologies developed by CERN for particle accelerators in the electrical distribution systems of future hydrogen-powered aircraft. “Superconducting technologies could drastically reduce the weight of next-generation aircraft and increase their efficiency,” CERN announced. “If the expected performances and reliability objectives are achieved, the collaboration could reach the ambitious target of flying a fully integrated prototype within the next decade.”

“Partnering with a leading research institute like CERN, which has brought the world some of the most important findings in fundamental physics, will help to push the boundaries of research in clean aerospace as we work to make sustainable aviation a reality,” said Sandra Bour-Schaeffer, CEO of Airbus UpNext. Founded in 1954, the CERN laboratory, home to the world’s most powerful particle accelerator (the Large Hadron Collider), sits astride the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva.