The British Are Coming to Frederick County

FREDERICK COUNTY, VA-After giving Canada and the states of Georgia, Maryland and North Carolina the once-over, England’s M&H Plastics has decided to establish its first US manufacturing facility in Virginia. The producer of plastic bottles, caps and tubes will make a home for its blow-molding plant in a 65,000-sf facility within the Fort Collier Industrial Park, a 330-acre business park off I-81. M&H will lease the building and will spend $12 million to get it up and running. According to Delta Associates’ Year-End 2003 Industrial Market Report, the average asking rent for flex/warehouse properties in Northern Virginia is $7.81 per sf.

“The reason we selected Virginia was a combination of geographical location with respect to our main customer base and the ease of travel to and from the UK, the quality and availability of the local work force, and the business-friendly attitude of the Commonwealth of Virginia,” M&H managing director John Anderton explains. But geography was not the only factor in the company’s decision-making process. “One of the location parameters was to find a building they could readily expand,” Winchester-Frederick County Economic Development Commission executive director Patrick Barker tells Globest.com. “The building is expandable to 200,000 sf, which is why they chose it.”