“This year we are reviewing the Advantage Mississippi legislation passed in 2000 to tweak it and strengthen it, now that we have had a couple of years of working with it,” says Sherry Vance, communications director, Mississippi Development Authority. Currently, Advantage Mississippi offers a series of programs and incentives such as the Advantage Jobs program, which is essentially a rebate to employers that meet certain employment and wage criteria.

“Mississippi has also been strengthening our supplier base and we have had 22 announcements by Nissan suppliers since Nissan's siting announcement in 2000,” Vance says. “We are bringing more suppliers online as Nissan nears its production start-up this May.”

Vance says Mississippi economic development officials are also reviewing how the state can continue to support and retain its existing industries while developing new programs, incentives and initiatives. “We are not focusing on the now but we are looking at the future,” she says.

The Port of Vicksburg is also planning for its future. “We have projected that 240 tons of scrap metal per week will be going out of our port to a company in Arkansas that will re-work the steel for Nissan suppliers,” says Jimmy Heidel, president, Warren County Port Commission.

“We have just received $1.2 million in federal grants to upgrade our port facilities,” he says. “We will be adding another rail spur, improving our roads and installing a new overhead crane.”
Heidel says port officials received a $400,000 grant to conduct a feasibility study for adding another 80 acres of land to the port. “We have several industries that are interested in the port, but we don't have any water sites for them, although we do have three buildings that are for sale,” he says.

Heidel notes that the Port of Vicksburg, which is 50 miles from the Nissan plant in Canton, is also in a Foreign Trade Zone. “Yorozu Automotive, which is located at an industrial park in Warren County, will be shipping a very expensive welding wire from Japan to the port,” he says. “The benefit of the Foreign Trade Zone to Yorozu Automotive will be the delay and reduction to the cost of the duty.”

Starkville is also looking to the future by developing the 220-acre Cornerstone E-Commerce and Industrial Park. “We will have four projects underway in the next 18 months,” says David Thornell, president and CEO, Greater Starkville Development Partnership.

“The 25,000-square-foot Powe Center for Innovative Technology is currently underway, as is the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems.” The Powe Center will feature 5,000 square feet of clean rooms and will provide start-ups with access to Mississippi State University labs and the John C. Stennis Space Center's technology labs, when available.

“The Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems is a design center for Nissan's Canton facility which will be staffed by Nissan employees and Mississippi State University faculty,” Thornell says.

Targets

Mississippi's clusters include plastics and polymers; automotive; communications and information technology; forest products; and transportation/distribution. There are more than 200 companies involved in the manufacture, processing and use of polymers in the state. The University of Southern Mississippi's Mississippi Polymer Institute works in conjunction with the university's polymer science department to develop new products and processes, as well as providing technical training and services.

In regard to automotive, Vance says the supplier growth has been tremendous. “We are pleased with the base we have now, but we know as Nissan expands with its additional $500 million investment, more suppliers will be looking to Mississippi as home,” she says.

In December, the state released a forest products cluster study, which will allow the state to focus its efforts to create a business friendly climate that appeals to the forest products and furniture industries.

Sue Stidham, director of the Montgomery County Economic Development Partnership, says Montgomery County is an ideal location for transportation/distribution. “We are 80 miles from the ports on the east and west sides of the state, and we are 250 miles from the Port of Gulfport,” she says. “We also sit along the Canadian Northern rail system, and U.S. Highway 82 runs east and west. We are centrally located to provide great access to locations in the South.”

Workforce

Stidham says that Montgomery County offers a tuition grant program that pays a portion or all of the tuition for anyone in the county to attend one of four designated colleges in the state.

Heidel says that Yorozu Automotive is donating its specialized robotics equipment to Hinds Community College, which has a branch in Warren County, and will bring its own instructors to train workers on its system. He says that workforce-training programming also sends workers to Japan for training.

Mississippi has many research and development facilities supporting its industries. Telecom is supported by the Institute for Technology Development's Advanced Microelectronics Division, which designs and builds advanced microchips. Additionally, the University of Mississippi's Center for Wireless Communications conducts applied research for telecom. NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center houses the NASA Technology Transfer Office and the Mississippi Enterprise for Technology, which is a business incubator to develop new technologies that come out of NASA and 21 other state and federal agencies at the center.

The higher education system in Mississippi features 37 public and private colleges and universities.

Business Climate

Advantage Mississippi includes the Mississippi Advantage Jobs Act, the Growth and Prosperity Act, Tax Credit Amendments and Workforce Training and Retraining.

Mississippi also has available facilities and land. As a result of industry leaving the area, Montgomery County currently has two industrial buildings available with low ceiling heights. “Depending on the number of jobs created, we are able to offer these structures for no or little rent for at least a year, and very little rent for the next several years after that,” Stidham says.

She says the county can also provide the same incentive at its 151-acre industrial site, in addition to the state tax incentives. The site is 10 miles from Interstate 55 and sits on U.S. Highway 82. The county also has a 60-acre industrial park, which is within a mile of Interstate 55 and is near the rail system.

Mississippi's infrastructure features 14 federal highways and six interstate highways. “Warren County is working with Hinds and Madison Counties on further developing Highway 22,” Heidel says. “We would like to create a four-lane highway on a seven mile stretch from our industrial park interchange to the highway because then we will have Interstates 20 and 220 and Highway 22 going straight to Canton.”

Mississippi is home to 20 rail companies that run on 2,841 miles of track. Under the Canadian National and Illinois Central railroads merger, Jackson is the headquarters for the railway's new $1.7 million Gulf Division.

There are nearly 800 miles of commercially navigable waterways in Mississippi on the Mississippi River, the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway and the Gulf of Mexico. Major ports are found at Natchez, Vicksburg, Greenville and Rosedale. Two deepwater ports are located on the Gulf of Mexico, including Pascagoula and the Mississippi State Port at Gulfport, which is a Foreign Trade Zone.

Mississippi features 76 publicly owned and four privately owned airports, with seven offering scheduled air carrier service. “The Golden Triangle Airport in Starkville is the third busiest airport in the state,” Thornell says.

For complete information visit www.mississippi.org, www.vicksburgliving.com, www.starkville.org and www.montgomerycountyedp.org.