KANSAS CITY—US Farathane LLC has decided to locate its newest manufacturing operation here in suburban Riverside, just one of an impressive number of top auto parts suppliers that has settled in the metro region since the end of the recession and the recovery of the auto industry.
“This is the eleventh one we've seen in the last 18 months,” Chris Gutierrez, president of Kansas City SmartPort, Inc., an affiliate of the Kansas City Area Development Council, tells GlobeSt.com.
Gutierrez' group helps companies like US Farathane with their site selection process. He traces this industrial revival to the decision by both General Motors and Ford to greatly expand their operations in the greater Kansas City area. In January 2013, GM announced that it would spend $600 million to upgrade its plant in Fairfax, KS, just across the river. And a few months later, Ford announced that it would add 2,000 workers to its Kansas City Assembly Plant to meet consumer demand for the Ford F-150 and produce the new Ford Transit, previously made in Europe.
The Auburn Hills, MI-based US Farathane evaluated sites in five states before selecting a 220,000 square-foot spec building in Riverside's Horizons Business Park. The company will hire another 267 people over the next three years and invest $51.6 million in the project. It plans to manufacture injection moldings primarily for the GM plant and also use Kansas City as a central hub for certain product lines.
The manufacturer is not the first supplier to select Riverside as a base of operations. As reported last year in GlobeSt.com, Martinrea International, one of the largest global Tier 1 auto-parts suppliers, signed a long-term, build-to-suit lease for a 275,560-square-foot building in the Horizons Business Park.
“Riverside is right in the heart of the action—it's close to OEMs, it has an experienced workforce, and a business-friendly environment,” says Andy Greenlee, president of US Farathane. “Expanding to the KC region puts US Farathane in a great position to better serve our customers and expand our presence in the automotive industry.”
And the growing popularity of Ford's Transit and the F-150, as well as GM's Chevy Malibu, built at the Fairfax plant, bodes well for the region's future, says Gutierrez. “We think more activity is on the way as the companies' ramp up production of these models.”
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
