11:23 p.m.: City, county try to attract Asian development

By Aleasha Sandley, Herald Bulletin Staff Writer

November 12, 2008 11:23 pm

— ANDERSON — From their trip to Asia, city and county economic development officials brought back plenty of international business opportunity.
Anderson Economic Development Director Linda Dawson, Deputy Mayor Greg Graham, economic development specialist Iyako Girt and Madison County Economic Development Director Rob Sparks visited China and Japan earlier this month to market the city and county to overseas investors.
They met with government dignitaries from China’s Yuhang District, which is Anderson’s sister city, site consultants and manufacturers in an attempt to attract them to the area’s central location and low cost of living.
“Several of the site consultants expressed interest in looking at our area as a distribution point,” Dawson said. “Obviously transportation is a huge component of products made in China, and the general feeling is that they could do distribution to one point.”
Madison County is within eight hours of 75 percent of the United States, Dawson said, a fact that she hopes will draw more Asian companies to explore the Midwest instead of stopping at the West Coast.
“Now they’re seeing the cost savings of a better transportation system and less expensive cost of doing business,” she said.
Two companies were particularly interested in Anderson: an all-terrain vehicle maker and a brake shoe component manufacturer. The ATV maker was interested in manufacturing the vehicles in the Midwest so he could put a “Made in the USA” label on them and sell them to South America, Dawson said.
“‘Made in USA’ products in South America can bring a higher price tag than ‘Made in China’ products,” she said.
The brake shoe company was interested in the fact that Anderson is located within an hour and a half of Subaru, Honda and Chrysler plants.
The delegates stressed Anderson’s location, cost of doing business and the fact that more interstates cut through Indiana than any other state, Graham said.
“You could build you product today and have it on the shelf tomorrow,” he said.
Asian businesses also were impressed that Nestlé, a big brand name there, chose Anderson for its largest plant.
A large part of the delegation’s visit to Asia emphasized the fact that Asian business people like to build personal relationships before making business deals.
“In our research with other communities and businesses that do operate within the Asian market, they have stressed that continuous relationship building is very important, so we hopefully, if the budget will allow, plan to visit potential companies and government entities in the near future,” Dawson said. “I definitely feel like relationships with the companies, the site locators and the government entities were greatly strengthened.”
Sparks said the relationships helped the Asian companies understand more about Anderson and Madison County’s work force.
“We’re out there selling the work force to these folks, letting them know we have people who want to work and understand the global economy,” he said. “I’m pretty upbeat and encouraged that we’ll have some further dialog on both sides and it will eventually lead to new jobs.”
Sparks and Girt stayed in Japan an extra day to visit the parent company of ELSA, an automotive component manufacturer in Elwood.
Graham hopes the city and county can further their relationships with Asian industry and plans to talk to universities to expand their educational contacts and hospitals to further health care contacts.
“We very much increased the knowledge of Anderson with these folks,” he said. “We talked to a lot of people and we told the story of why this is a good place to invest and to live.”

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