Missouri Partnership’s Subash Alias Discusses Missouri’s Unique Strengths and Attracting New Jobs and Investment to Missouri on OUTdrive Podcast
- December 04, 2023
Missouri Partnership focuses on the business attraction piece of Missouri’s economic development operation, guiding site location consultants and business executives through the process of locating sites and available space for businesses expansion projects. With one of the most diverse economies, Missouri is a stable and healthy place for a company to grow, but faces stiff competition. That’s where Missouri’s outstanding workforce, central location, diverse economy, and quality of life come into the conversation.
Subash Alias, CEO at Missouri Partnership, sat down with Cliff Callis, host of the popular podcast OUTdrive, to discuss Missouri’s unique strengths and the challenge of getting the word out about being one of the most friendly states for business.
Cliff Callis:
Tell us all about Missouri Partnership.
Subash Alias:
So we’re a public-private, nonprofit economic development group, and we were set up in 2008. We just celebrated our 15-year anniversary. We really do one thing, and that is work to bring new companies to Missouri. And that objective is to create jobs and investment for Missourians. There are four legs of the stool of economic development. And we focus really on the one leg of the stool that’s all about business attraction. So that’s bringing in companies to Missouri. We work very closely with the Missouri Department of Economic Development and the Hawthorn Foundation. So the Missouri Department of Economic Development is our public sector partner and the Hawthorn Foundation’s our private sector partner. But essentially, the Department of Economic Development contracted their business attraction function to our group. And so every single day we are focused on one thing and I think that’s why we do really good work; we know what we work on and we know what we don’t work on. And so we go out and pursue opportunities to create jobs for Missourians.
Cliff Callis:
We appreciate everything that you’re doing for the state of Missouri and all of its citizens. You know, I think I’ll say this for most people that live in Missouri. They think it’s a really great place, and that’s why they live here. What would you say are Missouri’s competitive advantages when you go to market? What are the things that you’re talking about that differentiates us?
Subash Alias:
There are so many things. First I would say Missouri has one of the most diverse economies in the country. And you can’t really have a diverse economy if you don’t excel at multiple industries. So why that’s important is, you know, we don’t have one industry that’s dominating our economy. So if that industry were to maybe falter, it doesn’t bring down the entire Missouri economy. But at the same time, if that industry is really thriving, the Missouri economy can grow, but it may not grow like you might see on the coasts. The coasts tend to have more significant swings in economic activity. Missouri has its ups and downs, but they’re much softer. And so that’s important because when we’re courting companies they’re looking at investing large amounts.. Right now, we’re working an $800 million beef production plant that is under construction. That’s almost $1 billion going into the ground in Missouri. And they want to make that investmentin a place that’s sort of a safe haven. So companies look to mitigate risk and Missouri’s diverse economy does that. In addition to that, we have a AAA bond rating. And we’ve had that for decades. And we have it from all three credit rating agencies. So that is again part of the mitigating risk. So when we make an offer to a company they know that offer is going to be there and it’s going to be good. Not every state can make that claim. So that’s just one component to some of our assets. We also have the second lowest corporate income tax among states that have corporate income tax. We’re second in apprenticeships and second lowest cost of doing business. So those are some of the things that employers are looking at. When I talk about our industries we’re so diverse and we excel in many of them. One is manufacturing. We have a very diverse manufacturing base in automotive and aerospace defense. We’re seeing a lot of food processing, construction materials and general manufacturing. e do well with manufacturers because of our central location and our lower cost profile. That’s part of our value proposition for manufacturers when it comes to distribution centers. We see a lot of activity in distribution centers as well. So these are these big warehouse facilities to get products from manufacturers to the consumers. Being in the middle of the country and I don’t know if you knew this, but we are the statistical population center of the United States. So if you had to distribute something to every single human being, you can’t find a better place to do that than Missouri. So we see a lot of distribution centers. And here we have all class one railroads coming through Missouri. We have the intersection of the Missouri and the Mississippi River, the two largest river systems in North America. We have the most northern ice free port withfull access to the Gulf of Mexico and all the globe and all of North America, all that’s happening right here in Missouri. So those are some of the traditional industries that we have, but we also have some emerging industries, too. On the western side of the state, we have this strong cluster of animal health and animal health companies. There are over 300 animal health companies in the animal health corridor, which is large, anchored in Kansas City. That’s the highest concentration of animal health companies in the world. On the eastern side of the state, you’ve got a strong plant science economy. Over 1,000 of the best and brightest plant scientists are doing incredible work all about, you know, how do we increase yield? How do we feed a growing population? You know, our global population is growing. So how do you feed all of those people with the same amount of land we had from the very beginning? How do you deal with that in multiple climates, global climates. All that research is happening on the eastern side of the state. And then kind of the intersection of that is agtech as well. So that’s another kind of a newer industry that we’ve really been excited about. And then you may have heard about the geospatial and the role of geospatial and agtech, but that’s another industry that we’ve been seeing a lot of attention on the last several years. The way we kind of sell Missouri – those are kind of our kind of high level talking points. But the way we sell Missouri is we actually turn the conversation around and we actually listen to clients, you know, what is it? What is it that they’re looking for? And how can we match that in Missouri and those conversations go on and on.