GLDPartners News Blog
Silicon Valley Business Journal Exclusive: New 2,000 Acre Silicon Valley AutoTech Complex in California
Jody Meacham of the Silicon Valley Business Journal has written this week about a project that GLDPartners is working on in California. Their lead story: Exclusive: Merced County is developing a 2,000-acre auto tech center for Silicon Valley's self-driving cars tells the story about how we're working with Merced County on the development of a large-scale multimodal manufacturing and logistics hub, the Mid-California International Trade District. This complex is slated to be a $1B project that will house 8M square feet of tech-industrial development and about 10,000 jobs.
Electronics Supply Chains in the US Are About to Get a Big Boost.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Taiwan’s Foxconn, Samsung Electronics Company and LG Electronics are all poised to make big investments in the United States. Foxconn Technology Group is preparing to decide on one of seven states where it plans to spend some $10 billion to expand its contract manufacturing operations, a move that will draw in Foxconn’s huge network of suppliers and parts distribution.
USDoT Launches INFRA Grant Program: GLDPartners Invites Project Reviews
More federal grant funds to support transportation infrastructure were announced in late June. This represents the Trump Administration's follow-on to the project funding program that has been known as FASTLANE previously under the Obama Administration. The newly named program will be called INFRA and will focus on projects in which the local sponsor is significantly invested and where the project is positioned to proceed rapidly to construction. USDoT is interested to participate in projects that are of national or regional economic significance. INFRA funds can be used for a range of purposes, including: reconstruction, rehabilitation, property acquisition, environmental mitigation, construction contingencies, equipment acquisition, and operational improvements. Ultimately funded at $1.5B, this is a modest investment in terms of overall national infrastructure, but does represent some serious funding for specific projects. Representing new emphasis, the DoT is increasingly interested projects that include private investment. Some portion of the funding (25%) is set-aside for projects in rural areas. Applications for funding must be received within 120 days following publication, which was June 29, 2017.
Need for Greater Commitment to US Strategic Infrastructure Investment: HMT
The Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund Reform Act of 2017 has been introduced in both the US House and Senate to restructure how the Harbor Maintenance Tax Trust Fund monies are spent, with a stronger emphasis on port harbor maintenance needs. Generating over $1.6B every year, diverting monies from the Fund has long been a major issue for seaports as their business activity generates tremendous resources that were intended to be spent on supporting ongoing harbor maintenance needs.
Magna to build BMW’s new hybrid as the world’s only contract auto manufacturer. More of this to come.
We've been anticipating this and now it's happening and it's big news. The blur between supplier and OEM in the automotive sector is increasing. The giant Canadian-based automotive supplier to OEMs has announced a new facility in Austria to assemble both the Jaguar I-Pace (JLR) and the BMW 5-Series plug-in hybrid vehicles. Now, with contract manufacturer responsibilities, a firm like Magna is moving toward status as a "partner OEM". This is likely to portend other moves where suppliers take on assembly of specialized vehicles for legacy OEMs, but also for some of the new-on-scene tech-oriented automotive start-ups.
Delphi: A Lesson in Modern “Corporate Industrial Evolution”
Delphi Automotive is becoming a global leader in next-generation automotive technology and this transformation is probably one of the best examples of a successful corporate transformation. Delphi has come full-circle in shedding its formal role as producers of commodity products for the massive automotive industry, and anticipating a fundamentally new automotive industry has repositioning itself as a leader in what's being referred to as producing and servicing tomorrow's "automotive networks".