Alabama Key Industry Targets

 

From the Appalachian foothills to the Gulf of Mexico, Alabama offers a diversity of people, landscapes and industries. Alabama’s 4.7 million people still display the Southern hospitality that invites folks to come and stay awhile. Positioned in the geographic heart of the nation’s fastest-growing region – the southeastern United States, Alabama in the center of the fourth-largest economy in the world.

Alabama is home to three major international auto manufacturers (Mercedes, Honda and Hyundai) and with more than 711,000 cars and light trucks manufactured in 2010, Alabama continues to grow as a major automotive hub.

Putting a man on the moon was largely accomplished in Huntsville, where NASA built the Saturn V rocket.Today, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Teledyne Brown are among 280 aerospace-defense-related companies calling Alabama home.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) is an international hub in life sciences. As the state’s largest employer, with 18,000 people, UAB is a global leader in healthcare and medical research. Huntsville’s HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology is among the research leaders  in the Human Genome Project, the international scientific project to determine the sequence of DNA.

Fast Facts

• The steel industry is alive and well in Alabama. German-based ThyssenKrupp Steel chose a site near Mobile for a $5 billion steel-making plant that will employ 2,700.
• Alabama’s chemical manufacturing industry is the second largest exporter in the state with $1.4 billion output in 2009. More than 9,000 Alabamians are employed by some 200 chemical companies.
• Food processing is vibrant. Alabama ranks second nationally in catfish sales and is the third-largest broiler producer in the country.
• Alabama forests are equal to the size of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Delaware – combined (28.3 billion cubic feet of standing timber.) With 850 companies statewide, forestry is a leading manufacturing sector posting $15 billion annually in products and directly employing 70,000 with an annual payroll of $2.2 billion.
• Alabama boasts of three  major tire manufacturing plants employing 3,500.
• Birmingham and Mobile are two of the 50 Most Logistics Friendly Cities ranked by Material Handling & Logistics magazine. At the crossroads of the Sunbelt with a major ocean port in Mobile, five interstates and abundant rail, Alabama has more than ample distribution and warehousing capabilities.

Click an industry sector on the right for more detailed information.