Thomasville’s selection by Canada’s Lakeside Steel as the site for a $40 million steel pipe mill underscores Alabama’s strong position as a steel supplier.
Lakeside officials say a major advantage of the Thomasville location is proximity to the $ 5 billion ThyssenKrupp steel mill complex an hour’s drive away in north Mobile County and two other steel mills within a 220-mile radius. Nucor Steel, one of the nation’s largest, has three mills in Alabama – Birmingham, Tuscaloosa and Decatur.
Lakeside is poised to begin making steel pipe and casings for the oil and gas industry in early 2012. The $40 million, 783-foot-long facility will employ 120 to make some 192,000 tons of pipe annually, according to published reports.
“This was a fantastic location for us to have options for steel suppliers,” said Chris Roik, vice president for Lakeside’s Alabama operations, according to a published report.
Thomasville, in Clarke County, is 100 miles north of the port city of Mobile.
Meanwhile, Metals USA, based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., will build a rail-serviced steel center adjacent to the Thomasville mill to conduct steel slitting and warehousing.
Lakeside’s separate heat-treatment and pipe-end finishing facility just north of Thomasville is expected to be in operation by February 2012. Located at a former sawmill site, the $17.5 million finishing plant will employ 160 to heat-treat pipe and casings, and finish the ends with thread, allowing pipe to be connected.
The two Lakeside-Thomasville plants will allow the Welland, Ontario company to double production of oil country tubular goods (OCTG) designed primarily for oil and gas drilling.
Honda’s only North American plant making the Odyssey minivan, Pilot SUV and Ridgeline pickup truck will add 100 new jobs as part of an $84 million expansion in 2013.
The announcement was made Nov. 15 at the 10th anniversary celebration of the Lincoln, Ala., factory. The event drew Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and statewide officials.
Earlier, the Japanese carmaker announced a $191 million investment and 40 new jobs in 2013, according to published reports. Combined with the Nov. 15 announcement, Honda will invest $275 million and increase its workforce by 140.
Honda’s $1.5 billion factory employs 4,000.
Six of the world’s top 10 chemical companies have industrial plants in Alabama.
Among Chemical Week’s Top 10 companies by revenue with an Alabama presence are BASF, Dow Chemical, Sabic, DuPont, Ineos and Mitsubishi.
Two other chemical companies with Alabama ties made the Top 20: Akzo Nobel (14) produces high-quality inorganic sulfur-based chemicals, including carbon disulfide, sulfuric acid, sodium hydrosulfide and sulfuric chlorides at LeMoyne, just north of Axis. Evonik (17) chose the port city of Mobile for its largest North American plant. Some 700 employees produce hydrogen peroxide, fumed silica, and the animal feed additive methionine.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has awarded Vaxin Inc. a two-year, $14.5 million grant to develop an anthrax vaccine.
Vaxin has laboratory facilities in downtown Birmingham’s Innovation Depot, a bioscience/IT/business services incubator in partnership with the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), a major research university.
The award comes with potential for expansion of up to four years and $21.7 million, according to an HHS news release.
Vaxin will conduct studies and create the manufacturing process for the vaccine, called AdVAV. Federal officials said the nasal spray given by non-medical personnel will be easier to administer than the current vaccine. Vaxin will be charged with optimizing and validating commercial-scale manufacturing processes for the vaccine.
Vaxin opened for business in 1997 in the wake of research conducted at UAB by company founder and scientist De-chu Tang, according to published reports.
Fresh on the heels of a $290 million body shop expansion at its plant near Tuscaloosa, Ala., Mercedes is again investing in the facility with the announcement of $2 billion in three models of vehicles and expanding production by more than 40,000 a year.
Another 1,000 jobs will be added when the new C-Class comes online in 2014, according to published reports.
The $2 billion announcement will bring Mercedes’ total investment in the plant to $4 billion since opening in 1997.
This additional investment will be used to redesign the flagship SUV, the M-Class and the GL-Class, along with the roll-out of the C-Class.
“These are all very clear signals that we build our future on Tuscaloosa,” said Dieter Zetsche, chairman of Daimler AG, parent company of Mercedes. "I just wish every decision our company has made was as good as the decision to come to Alabama."
“Tuscaloosa was the first production location of Mercedes-Benz cars ever outside of Germany, and today it is among our best,” he said. “As our pioneering plant, it is also the blueprint for our new operations in emerging markets.”
Norfolk Southern CEO Wick Moorman was joined by Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and U.S. Rep. Spencer Bachus, and other dignitaries Monday, June 6, to break ground on a $97 million regional intermodal hub in the west Birmingham suburb of McCalla.
The Norfolk Southern hub – covering more than 300 acres – is expected to draw a host of warehouse and distribution-related companies looking for proximity to the railroad’s ambitious Crescent Corridor project. Norfolk Southern’s economic impact study estimated that the intermodal facility will result in 8,600 jobs over the next 10 years.
The Crescent Corridor is a program of independent projects and improvements geared toward creating a high-capacity 2,500-mile intermodal route from New Jersey to Louisiana touching 26 percent of the nation's population and 30 percent of the nation's manufacturing output, according to Norfolk Southern. It also provides the shortest intermodal double-stack route between the South and the Northeast.
The Jefferson Metropolitan Park Lakeshore has network connectivity provided by seven of nine fiber optics carriers either in or close to the park, according to an assessment study by Massachusetts fiber optic company, NEF Inc. The presence of this fiber network will poise JeffMet to attract data centers that require strict site selection criteria driven by their role as mission critical facilities.
The report comes following a 2008 study by Boyd Company showing Birmingham ranked in the nation’s Top 10 least expensive cities to build a data center operation.
Alabama economic development officials have accelerated efforts to lure data centers to Birmingham because of JeffMet’s fiber optic network. The lofty status is evidenced by the first major company to locate in the park: Wachovia, since bought by Wells Fargo, invested $400 million for its data center in 2006.
The newest tenant will be Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems, with plans for a $25 million data center. Other tenants include Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama and Southern Company, with 130 acres of unoccupied space available.
While data centers traditionally don’t create large numbers of new jobs, they are considered wise investments, with the hope companies have a good experience and consider relocating other functions to their area.
The past four years have seen a business incubator focused on biotech, life sciences, IT and the service industry pour an estimated $1 billion into the Birmingham, Ala., economy.
Birmingham’s Innovation Depot said employees at the 75 companies in the incubator earned $76 million in 2010, an $8 million increase over last year. The positive numbers were in the incubator’s annual economic impact study released March 9, according to published reports.
Of the 75 companies, 36 are information technology concerns; 12 biotech/life sciences; 11 engineering technology and 12 general business.
Innovation Depot is funded in part by the University of Alabama at Birmingham, one of the state’s major research institutions. The Depot is a consolidation between the nonprofit Entrepreneurial Center and UAB’s Office for the Advancement of Developing Industries, according to UAB.
“I look at this building as the embodiment of the future of Birmingham,” said Susan Matlock, president and CEO of Innovation Depot, when discussing the move to the renovated former Sears building downtown. “And our path to the future is UAB.”
The $17 million facility, three blocks from the UAB campus, has 20,000 square feet of “wet” laboratory space, a high-speed centrifuge, a CytoViva microscopic optics system, a minus-80-degree freezer, and an autoclave, according to the news release.
“Our signage says ‘UAB,’ ” Matlock said. “That is to indicate that this is a partnership. UAB is very important to our success.”
“We’re very pleased that our incubator has moved closer to the university,” said Dr. Richard Marchase, UAB vice president for research. “It puts our faculty members who are entrepreneurs closer to where their companies are going to develop. For people whose full-time jobs are at UAB, it’s now easy to spend a little time over at Innovation Depot ensuring that good progress is being made in the companies that have spun out of their research. It’s a very positive retention and recruiting tool for us.”
The Innovation Depot is a public-private economic development effort funded, in addition to UAB, by the Birmingham regional business community, private foundations, the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham, the city of Birmingham and Jefferson County.
A dramatic 25 percent increase in Alabama exports from 2009 to 2010 underscores the strength of the state’s economy, with exports responsible for 294,000 jobs.
Alabama’s reputation as the South’s top car manufacturer was bolstered by vehicle production topping exports. The state’s three major manufacturers (Mercedes, Honda, Hyundai) shipped vehicles to 85 countries, totaling $4 billion.
Other export leaders were chemicals (up 30 percent), minerals (up 72 percent) and machinery (up 29 percent), according to a news release by the state Alabama Development Office (ADO).
Overall, Alabama exported to 191 foreign destinations with most going to the NAFTA markets of Canada and Mexico. Other top markets are China, Germany and Brazil.
“Alabama’s rebound of exports from 2009 is tremendous for the state’s economy,” said ADO Director Seth Hammett. “Exports help sustain and create jobs, and it is estimated more than 294,000 jobs were required to produce and ship these goods.”
Despite the success, state leadership is not resting, with trade missions planned to Ireland, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates.
Austal USA has been awarded a $432 million contract to build 10 of the U.S. Navy’s high-speed, versatile littoral combat ships (LCS) in Mobile.
Vehicles made at Alabama’s three international automakers posted strong sales for October, led by a whopping 125 percent increase in Hyundai’s Sonata.
The automotive industry continues to grow in Alabama with the Sept. 21 grand opening of Posco’s (Pohang Iron and Steel Company) 144,000-square-foot plant to process steel sheet into car parts.
With customers including Honda, BMW and Volkswagen, the factory near Birmingham is expected to churn out 120,000 metric tons of product annually. The plant is located in the 739-acre Jefferson Metropolitan Park, one mile from Interstate 20/59, two miles from Birmingham’s southern beltway, I-459, and near a major line of Norfolk Southern Railway.
“Posco pointed out in their presentation they felt like this is the center of the U.S. automotive industry and they wanted to be a vital, successful part of it,” said Patrick Murphy, director of the Birmingham Business Alliance’s economic development efforts, according to published reports.
Posco’s plant is a cutting edge integrated processing center that will strengthen sales and service to global automobile manufacturers of Japan and Europe, as well as electrical steel sheet clients, according to the company.
Based in Pohang, South Korea, Posco is one of the world’s largest steelmakers.
Alabama is home to three major automobile manufacturing plants – Mercedes, Honda and Hyundai – with a total of 9,500 employees.
By Gilbert Nicholson, Staff Writer
Site Selection magazine named Alabama Power one of North America's top 10 utilities for economic development in 2009.
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