MISSOURI: The Perfect Center
elsewhere along the rivers in Missouri. “Many products that are imported from China arrive in containers via New Orleans,” Blocker says. “Those contain- ers could be loaded into barges.” AIR CARGO TAKES FLIGHT Among the 131 public airports serving Missouri, two are major commercial facil- ities: Lambert International in St. Louis and Kansas City International Airport (KCI). Commercial service also is avail- able in Springfield, Joplin, Columbia, Cape Girardeau, Kirksville, and Fort Leonard Wood. Thanks to Missouri’s central location on the continent, passen- gers or freight flying from the state can reach most cities in the United States and Canada in three hours or less. KCI is the largest cargo airport in Missouri and five adjacent states – Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. Each night, trucks bring cargo from that entire region to load on planes belonging to the four all-cargo carriers that oper- ate at KCI – FedEx, UPS, DHL, and DB Schenker – and to 10 passenger/combi- nation cargo carriers. Two companies with cross-dock facilities at the airport, Forward Air Company and Jet Delivery Service, offer ground transportation and logistics services. The Kansas City Department of Aviation owns approximately 11,000 acres of land, giving it one of the largest footprints of any airport in the United States. Because it has developed only about 4,000 acres, though, there’s plenty of room to expand, says Gary Bartek, the department’s man- ager of cargo development. KCI recently attracted a new company: Smith Electric Vehicles, a UK-based man- ufacturer of electric delivery vehicles. “The company was attracted to the space that was available here, as well as our foreign trade zone benefits,” Bartek says. Lambert International doesn’t handle nearly as much cargo as KCI. But eco- nomic development leaders and officials at the St. Louis Airport Authority are mak- ing a big push to boost that facility’s cargo
I-70 CORRIDOR: Central and Smart A direct route between Kansas City and St. Louis, the I-70 corridor offers numerous highlights of its own. Columbia, home of the University of Missouri, sits just south of the interstate. A quick drive from there down U.S. 63 takes the traveler to Missouri’s state cap- ital, Jefferson City. Ditzfeld Transfer, one of the leading logistics firms in the Midwest, has been operating in the region since the 1960s. Today, it offers trucking and logistics services and oper- ates 921,000 square feet of warehouse space. “Ditzfeld provides logistic services to most of the region’s major companies,” says Tracy Brantner, president of the Central Missouri Economic Development Alliance in Warrensburg. A logistics operation seeking a cost-effective alternative to the state’s larger metropoli- tan areas will find exactly that in central Missouri, says Mike Downing, executive director at Missouri CORE, an economic development group representing 12 counties, with head- quarters in Jefferson City. By locating within 30 miles of Columbia, for example, a business could have access to a population base of more than 100,000 while benefiting from small town real estate pricing – or from something even better. “Several communities outside of Columbia are offering land for free with a minimum number of jobs,” he says. “They also are providing 100 percent prop-
erty tax abatement on real personal property, most of them for 10 years.” Several large companies have taken advantage of the CORE region’s benefits by locating distri- bution centers there. “Dollar General has a 1.5-million-square-foot facility in Fulton, off Highway 54, about 10 miles from Interstate 70,” Downing says. “Wal-Mart has a frozen foods distribution center in Moberly, and Scholastic has centers in Jefferson City and Moberly.” Further east, Montgomery County
Book publisher Scholastic operates distribution centers in Moberly (above) and Jefferson City.
is just an hour from St. Louis but offers significant savings on land and construction. “The property tax structure here is more friendly than in St. Louis, and we’ve got space,” says David Gaines, executive director at Montgomery City Growth, Inc. and Montgomery County Industrial Development. “If you need 100 acres on a railroad site, we’ve got that.” Tyson has a fresh meats distribution center in the Montgomery City Business Park. Across Highway 19 from that site, several firms have production or distribution operations in the Montgomery City Industrial Park. One is Port-a-King Building Systems, which manufactures guard shacks and toll booths. “They ship their buildings around the world,” Gaines says. Supreme Cuisine produces high-end food products in a processing plant formerly owned by a farmers’ co-op. “They added on a 30,000-square-foot frozen warehouse and another 5,000-square-foot kitchen and commissary,” says Gaines. A big selling point for Montgomery County is its capacity for growth. Montgomery City, for example, could triple its population without having to add more water capacity. “And we could double the size of the town and not have to add any more wastewater capacity,” Gaines says. The town has two wastewater treatment plants, both connected to the busi- ness and industrial parks, and connections to two electric substations give it a redundant power supply.
82 Inbound Logistics • September 2009
FACING LOGISTICS CHALLENGES? USE IL’S 3PL EXPERTS AND
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