Over 300 Industrial Plants Currently Under Construction in the U.S.

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Houston-September 16, 2003-Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). A recent survey performed by industrialinfo.com identifies 304 grassroot industrial plants currently under construction in the U.S. 73 of these plants or about 24% are scheduled to start operations before the end of the year. 121 or 39.8% are scheduled to begin operations in 2004, and the rest will start operations beyond 2004.

The plants are spread across nine major industrial sectors, including, chemical processing, food & beverage, industrial manufacturing, metals & minerals, oil & gas transmission & production, pharmaceutical & biotech, power, pulp & paper, and synfuels. The only major industry not represented by plants currently under construction is petroleum refining. This is understandable since the last grassroot fuels refinery to be constructed in the U.S. was Marathon Oil's Garyville, Louisiana refinery, which started operations in 1976. All of the industry's capacity increases have occurred at existing refineries since that time.

Click on the image at right for a pie chart showing the percentages of plants under construction by industrial sector.

Not surprisingly, the current "hot" industries, such as power and pharmaceutical & biotech, have the most new grassroot plants under construction. The leader is the pharmaceutical & biotech industry with 65 plants. Just over half of these plants, or about 53% are new research and development laboratories, and the rest are pharmaceutical manufacturing and distribution plants. One example of a project under construction in this sector is Bio-Rad Laboratories, Incorporated's new life sciences research and development center under construction in Hercules, California should open by the end of the year and employ 750. (PEC 06003245)

The power industry is a strong second with 63 power plants currently under construction. The majority of these plants are natural gas fired, however, there is a strong showing for grassroot wind power projects with 10 new wind farms under construction. One of the larger projects currently under construction in the power sector is the $300 Million 725 megawatt Marcus Hook Merchant Cogen (Plant 1049477) under construction in Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania. The plant is owned by FPL Energy Marcus Hook LLC, a subsidiary of FPL Group Incorporated (NYSE:FPL) (North Palm Beach, Florida) and should begin operations in March of 2004.

The largest plant currently under construction in terms of employment is Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama, LLC's automotive manufacturing plant in Hope Hull, Alabama (Plant 1057265) with a projected 1,500 employees when it opens in early 2005. Potential future employment could reach 4,000 at the site.

Contact Industrialinfo.com's Member Center for a listing of industrial plants in the U.S. currently under construction.