EDITOR’S NOTE:
The project records appearing every week in the Site Selection Project Bulletin are pulled from the
Conway Projects Database, a proprietary resource with tens of thousands of records
of corporate end-user facility investments across all industry sectors and all world
geographies. Want to look for our projects yourself? Look
here.
Ohio Gains Energy Boost
Ohio’s deregulated energy market, proximity to end markets and feedstock availability have secured reinvestment from Cenovus.
Photo courtesy of Cenovus
About 17 miles outside of Columbus, Ohio, energy company Cenovus Energy Inc. has announced a $1.5 billion investment in Dublin. The company also will expand its U.S. regional headquarters in the city, creating 115 new jobs. A significant portion of the project investment will go toward modernizing northwestern Ohio refineries located in Lima and Toledo. “As we continue to grow our business in Ohio, with its strengthening energy sector, keeping our U.S. regional headquarters in Dublin was an obvious choice,” said Cenovus Executive Vice-President Downstream Doreen Cole. “Ohio offers a vital strategic location, a skilled workforce and a supportive business environment, making it an ideal choice.”
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The Perfect Innovation Location
SK hynix, the leading manufacturer of high-bandwidth memory chips, will focus on its next-generation DRAM chip in Indiana.
Photo courtesy of SK hynix
Last week, South Korea-based semiconductor manufacturer SK hynix announced plans to construct a first-of-its-kind advanced packaging fabrication and R&D facility in West Lafayette, Indiana. The $3.87 billion project will produce the company’s Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) chips, which play a powerful role in powering AI systems like ChatGPT. “We are excited to become the first in the industry to build a state-of-the-art advanced packaging facility for AI products in the United States that will help strengthen supply-chain resilience and develop a local semiconductor ecosystem,” said SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-Jung. “With this new facility, we hope to advance our goal of providing AI memory chips with unmatched capabilities, serving the needs of our customers.” Strategically located near Purdue University, SK hynix will collaborate with the university on its AI-focused R&D activities and develop training programs to build a reliable talent pipeline in the region. The new facility is expected to become operational in 2028, potentially creating thousands of new jobs.
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Vietnam Provides A Nice Fit
Hyosung TNC received approval for its new plant from the Ba Ria-Vung Tu Provincial Government in March 2024, finalizing the investment decision in April.
Photo courtesy of Hyosung TNC
Hyosung TNC, the textile branch of industrial group Hyosung Corporation, is moving forward with a new $740 million investment in Tinh Ba Ria-Vung Tau, Vietnam. The project is to construct a new spandex material plant in the city’s Phu My 2 Industrial Park, expecting to produce 50,000 tons of butanediol per year. The material is to be eco-friendly and a good alternative for traditional fossil fuel-based materials, making it useful in automotive, packaging and textile industries. This investment will mark the company’s third facility in Vietnam, and this plant will allow for a complete life cycle of production to take place in the country. Construction will begin in 2024 and is expected to be completed in 2026.
Reports compiled and written by Alexis Elmore, edited by Adam Bruns
Marathon Petroleum Corp. spun off from Houston-based Marathon Oil in 2011. But it’s been a bedrock presence in Findlay, Ohio, part of the Toledo metro area, for more than 125 years, and employs more than 1,800 people in the area.
To view the chart below as a printable PDF file, click here. Here we consider the overall economy; real estate market conditions; labor market conditions; and transportation and logistics, to determine which markets offer the greatest opportunity. With growing global demand for goods and cross-border commerce on the rise, we remain bullish about the industrial […]
As this issue went to press in February, site selectors in the U.S. and globally were busy recasting their lists of finalist locations for manufacturing projects to include Indiana. The state may well have ranked high on some of those lists already — its business climate is considered robust by many evaluators of Midwest states, given its record of fiscal conservatism that includes a predictable and competitive tax structure among other measures.
But becoming the 23rd right-to-work state has energized Hoosier State efforts to escape the stigma, or at least perception, of Midwestern locations being less than business friendly to companies hoping to cultivate a work force free of union requirements their workers don’t embrace.
