North American Reports

Hikma Pharmaceuticals invests $267 million in Ohio; Oklahoma revamps a former fuel refi nery; USA Rare Earth announces South Carolina as next mining production location; Japanese solar goes big in Texas; Rhode Island expands radar production; exports increase from Alabama’s Port of Mobile.

Siemens Mobility will open a new manufacturing and rail services center in North Carolina; Meta earmarks $9 billion for an El Paso Data Center campus; Mercedes- Benz spends $4 billion expanding in Alabama; first uranium enrichment facility comes to Kentucky; Nestlé Mexico grows its operations; L3Harris spends over $1 billion on rocket manufacturing in Virginia.

Oak Ridge, Tennessee, sees expanded uranium enrichment production; the U.S. states with the longest commutes; aerospace startup CesiumAstro establishes new manufacturing facility and global headquarters near Austin; a $1 billion expansion boosts Port of Baltimore activity; clean chemical manufacturing locates in southeastern New Mexico; John Deere expands into Indiana and North Carolina.

Ohio plant reimagined for data center equipment manufacturing; top 10 U.S. states by health care experiences; Georgia welcomes animal vaccine manufacturing; autonomous ships set sail in the Gulf Coast; semiconductors rise in Ontario; New Jersey nets nearly $500 million in pharma manufacturing.

Potash mining in Saskatchewan is up; Eli Lilly expands in Houston; top fi ve states by value of manufacturing shipments per capita; the largest data center to be built in Mexico; Walmart expands presence in North Carolina; and New Mexico approves $165 billion data center campus, “Project Jupiter.”

The DOE jumps on the data center bandwagon; a $400 million agrifood investment in the Peach State; Mars invests $2 billion across multiple U.S. sites; Maryland goes nuclear; and Ford is all in on EV production.

Amazon and WhiteFiber in North Carolina; FDI manufacturing trends; SMR milestone in Ontario; Unilever invests in Mexico operations; aerospace manufacturing in Florida; Stellantis in Michigan.

Fiserv in metro Kansas City; Fermaca Dreams in Durango, Mexico; GE Aerospace in North Carolina; a $4 billion ammonia JV in Louisiana; a $23 billion U.S. investment plan from Novartis; the Top 10 most innovative states (No. 1 is not a state).

Apple’s $500 billion bet on the United States; GlobalFoundries in New York; a new lithium refi nery in Oklahoma; CBRE’s 100 largest o ce leases; Diageo in Alabama; Novva Data Centers in Arizona

Clemens Food Group is investing $250 million in a new, 550,000-sq.-ft. (51,000-sq.-m.) pork processing facility in Coldwater, Mich., that will create about 800 jobs.

Travelers flying over North Dakota at night will soon see fewer lights from natural gas flares.

Philips Lighting will expand their operations at the company’s Tupelo, Miss., facility, creating a manufacturing hub.

Agribusiness contributes more than $1.5 billion to the regional economy of western Michigan, and the new Michigan Hop Network hopes to assist hop farmers in adding to that total.

International Speedway Corporation announced a multi-year partnership with Toyota Motor Sales USA, Inc., making Toyota the first Founding Partner at Daytona International Speedway, part of the $400-million DAYTONA Rising redevelopment project.

Apple Inc. announced the opening of a new plant in Mesa, Ariz., that will create 700 jobs, as well as 1,300 construction jobs, for a region hard hit during the recession.

Chinese investors spent $12.2 billion in foreign direct investment in the first three quarters of 2013, on the way to a record-setting year, according to Rhodium Group’s Thilo Hanemann.

While economists fret over bubbles of another kind, the leading maker of bubble drinks is stretching its wings. Lollicup USA Inc., the specialty beverage manufacturer, supplier and retailer, is moving from 140,000 sq. ft. (13,000 sq. m.) in two separate locations in Walnut and Industry, Calif., to one shiny new 300,300-sq.-ft. (27,898-sq.-m.) facility in the San Bernardino County community of Chino. The company plans to add to its payroll of 150 once the relocation is complete in mid-third quarter 2013.

The Menlo Park City Council in late March approved all requested land use entitlements and agreements for the Facebook West Campus Project, and introduced ordinances approving the development agreement and rezoning the property to accommodate design requirements surpassing existing height limits.

Three early 2013 rankings and reports offer some guidance from the fringes of the site selection matrix.

Following up on two separate projects whose feasibility studies were announced just over a year earlier, South Africa-based energy and chemicals company Sasol announced in early December it will combine them into one complex. This and other stories from around North America