KANSAS CITY—After hitting a post-recession high in 2014, US auto sales have declined, but manufacturers still need new facilities to meet demand. And the Kansas City metro area, the nation's second largest auto manufacturing hub, is getting its share.
Faurecia, a leading automotive technology company, will build a new $60 million, 250,000-square-foot interiors production facility in Blue Springs, MO, a Kansas City suburb, according to the Kansas City Area Development Council. The company, a global leader in developing automotive seating, interior systems and clean mobility, will create 300 new jobs.
“Ford continues to do extremely well here,” Chris Gutierrez, president, KC SmartPort, an affiliate of the development council, tells GlobeSt.com. The company manufactures its popular F150 trucks and Transit vans here, “so we continue to see growth by the OEMs and other suppliers.”
Faurecia will build its new facility on a 25-acre parcel adjacent to NE 20th St. on the north side of I-70 in Blue Springs. The plant will manufacture and assemble door and instrument panels. In North America, Faurecia had sales of $5.78 billion in 2016 and employed approximately 20,000 people at 47 locations in Canada, Mexico and the US.
Kansas City was the second city in the US, after Flint, MI, to get a Ford plant, Gutierrez points out, and that long history means it has a deep labor pool that understands auto manufacturing. Faurecia, for example, looked for sites across a fairly wide region, but Kansas City chased them hard, and the local workforce's expertise proved irresistible.
In the past few years, both Ford and GM poured a lot of capital into their existing operations here. Furthermore, at the same time developers have created an additional three to four million square feet of new space devoted to auto manufacturing. The industry currently employs about 140,000 people in the region.
Gutierrez says the region still has a number of industrial buildings available that auto manufacturers and suppliers could use, but since “some of the older-generation facilities won't work for them,” more build-to-suits are probably on the way. “There are a few projects in the pipeline.”
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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.
