Investor Watch: March 21, 2024

DEMOGRAPHICS

“Already evident among the labor pools of several highly active manufacturing destinations in East Asia and Europe,” write the experts at Tractus in this exclusive contribution, “the next demographic disruption will have drastic repercussions for the global labor force in the not-so-distant future.”

DATA CENTERS

Hyperscalers are spending billions to turn farmland into fiber hubs.

INVESTMENT PROFILE: ANTIOCH, CALIFORNIA

Midway between Silicon Valley and Sacramento, Antioch, California, affords businesses and residents a more affordable location with easy access to the Greater Bay Area and the state capital.

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Way before a union local was founded, workers at the VW plant in Chattanooga celebrated the first vehicle coming off the line in April 2011.

Archive photo courtesy of VW

The United Auto Workers early this week announced that workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, had filed for a union election. For those who think a union in that area of the country is a novel concept, see our report from nearly a decade ago when UAW Local 42 first formed at the plant — followed shortly thereafter by a 2,000-job, $600 million expansion.

The 4.3-million-sq.-ft. USAA home office in San Antonio, Texas, has been ENERGY STAR certified for 21 years.

Photo courtesy of USAA

Last week the EPA recognized 103 U.S. manufacturing plants that earned the agency’s ENERGY STAR certification in 2023, designated for plants in the top 25% of energy efficiency in their sector. Which led us to ponder which states lead the way in overall ENERGY STAR certifications across more than 6.5 billion sq. ft. of certified space nationwide.

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Photo courtesy of Hitachi Rail

An admittedly self-serving global survey commissioned by Hitachi Rail of 12,000 people in cities around the world finds that 64% of them favor banning air travel where high-speed rail alternatives exist (as France did with a new law last year). Moreover, 56% support air taxes to fund new high-speed rail lines. Hitachi Rail says the survey, carried out by SavantaComres, collected data from 12,000 people in 12 different cities: Berlin, Copenhagen, Dubai, London, Milan, Paris, San Francisco, Singapore, Sydney, Toronto, Warsaw and Washington, D.C.  “Globally, peoples’ default choices for long distance travel (2.5 hours or more) is made up of 46% choosing to drive, 34% traveling by train and 16% flying,” Hitachi Rail stated. “How people travel is not set in stone though and respondents believe that their travel habits will change in the next five years. Globally, over one-third (35%) expect to travel more by train, while 6% believe they will travel more by plane and 17% by car.”

Photo by Pooneh Ghana for Austin City Limits Music Festival courtesy of Gibson Brands

Gibson brand Epiphone early this month unveiled the semi-hollow Dave Grohl DG-335 guitar to pay tribute to the leader of the Foo Fighters, who resume their “Everything or Nothing at All” tour in Dallas May 1. Epiphone is part of Gibson Brands, which in 2019 moved its HQ from near Nashville International Airport to the Cummins Station district in SoBro in downtown Nashville. The company’s former digs have been turned into a Kreate Hub incubator and coworking space that opened in September 2022. Gibson’s most recent facility investment is a new acoustic guitar manufacturing operation that opened in Bozeman, Montana, in December 2022. But mostly we just like Dave Grohl.