German Family-Owned Technical Textiles Manufacturer

Initial project requirements included 35-acre site and 56,000 ft² shell building with expansion capabilities; planned capital investment of $30m and 140 jobs.

Project Brief

Our client was one of Germany’s hidden champions, one of Bavaria’s internationally successful mid-sized companies of the Mittelstand. We helped our client find an ideal location for their U.S. home base that would allow them to seize the market potential for their high-quality products beyond orders from existing customers on the North-American market. As a family-owned company with roots dating back to the 19th century, internationalization was more than just a business case for the owner and CEO – it was a personal decision.

As trusted advisors, we worked very closely together with the family and management team on finding the ideal location for a new production facility. Due to existing contracts and a growing business in North America, the timeline was tight with only a few months to complete the site search and the planned start of production less than a year away. With the company’s history of becoming an integral member of the local community, we were simultaneously looking for a business-friendly environment offering a qualified workforce and a local partnership to assist in the company’s long-term growth.

Solution

Granted that the timeline was ambitious, we tried to mitigate potential environmental and permitting risks early in the process by guiding the executive team through our extensive and thorough requirements questionnaire, addressing critical questions early in the process. We initially identified 150 potential sites across numerous states in the target geography and systematically brought that number down over the course of 6 weeks through our proprietary analytical process to a short list of 18 locations. At this stage, we included both greenfield sites and shell building options in order to explore all feasible solutions and spread the risk.

After an intensive round of community presentations, we coordinated site visits for the management team to inspect each location first hand. These visits included extensive on-site intelligence-gathering, meetings with local decision-makers, visits to technical colleagues, interviews with the HR managers of local employers and of course productive visits of the proposed sites. These visits and programs complemented our desk-top research and holistic analysis of the locations, the basis for further eliminations. Once the client had agreed upon two finalist sites, we conducted a rigorous due diligence process as part of the final negotiations. The company found an ideal business location in a mid-sized community in central Georgia where production started up in 2016.

Site Selection Results

We identified an available 120,000 ft² shell building on a 100-acre greenfield site for a production facility with a planned capital investment of $30m and 140 new jobs in the Southeastern USA.