Expansion News and Views: From Lights to Fights

aHoward Industries announced yesterday that they will be expanding their Laurel, MS manufacturing facility by 550,000 square feet. Employees design and manufacture power transformers, which can weigh as much as 300,000 pounds and cost up to $1.5 million. Howard also manufactures indoor and outdoor lighting supplies, among many other products.
Governor Haley Barbour compared the Howard expansion to the recent Toyota expansion in Blue Springs, MS (which is covered in April's Business Facilities Magazine). "Good things."

aSpeaking of Toyota, Toyota Boshoku America announced this week that they will locate its North American office in the CirclePort Business Park in Erlanger, Kentucky. Toyota Boshoku will occupy 23,000 square feet of Class A office space in the Dolwick Business Center, 11 miles south of Cincinnati.They will also receive $2.1 million in tax incentives. Toyota Boshuku, based in Japan, produces automobile interiors.

aAnd speaking of cars, Spartan Chassis, Inc., a subsidiary of Spartan Motors, Inc. announced this week that they purchased two manufacturing facilities near its headquarters in Charlotte, MI. The facilities, totaling 80,000 square-feet, will manufacture components for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles. Spartan will spend around $8 million to get this facility up and running this year. The MRAP vehicles are designed to protect their occupants from a combination of mines, rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs, and improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, through their V-shaped hull, raised chassis and improved armor. According to U.S. government reports, roadside bombs and IEDs account for 70 percent of U.S. deaths and injuries in Iraq.

With U.S. troops tours of duty recently extended in Iraq, and a questionable time frame for the end of the war over there, the Pentagon is spending over $400 billion this year on the war. This might benefit some manufacturers, which we can watch through their physical expansions. If the market is there, no matter how controversial, somebody will fill it.