HEATH-NEWARK-LICKING COUNTY PORT AUTHORITY
OP-ED COLUMN

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 19, 2020

Sharing Signs of Opportunity at the Thanksgiving Dinner Table or Zoom

By: Rick Platt

Whether your family holiday gathering is in person or via Zoom, the topic of returning to Ohio needs to be an elevated topic for discussion this season. All things considered, Ohio has a great deal to be thankful for this season and Licking County is no exception.

Tell your out-of-town family that the signs of opportunity are here. The possibility to come home to Licking County and give yourself a raise is real. We can all be part of building the momentum for future opportunities in Licking County too.

Facebook, Google, and Amazon are highly visible tech infrastructure examples with a growing presence in Licking County. Even people working from home can find Licking County home base.

Our Port Authority campus in Central Licking County is a barometer too, especially for those who work in manufacturing.

New buildings are one sign. Six new buildings opened this year, including two companies starting food production work in the middle of the pandemic. Gathered Foods opened in May making plant-based seafood products for sale in North America. Nature’s One’s organic and plant-based infant formula production lines fired up in June.

Ariel Corporation just finished the tripling the size of their building in Heath. Two speculatively built industrial buildings hold the promise of more jobs to come. Plus, a new Air Force lab saw new state-of-the-art equipment installed last week.

Another sign is available jobs. The job opportunities are stronger than they have been in some time. Boeing has been hiring to fill vacancies. From Bionetics to AFMETCAL and MISTRAS Group to Samuel Packaging, there are regular job postings.

Engineering and STEM-skilled jobs are among the jobs in demand. With 200 people who work in engineering careers on our campus, it’s not surprising that OhioMeansJobs.com searches yield 30 pages of jobs with the word engineer in them for a 20-mile radius of Newark.

The signs of return are real too. In fact, there’s growing evidence that the return to Ohio has already begun.

GB Food’s general manager is a Newark Catholic grad who left the area for school and work. His eye was always on his hometown. In March, he came back to run the company’s food production operation.

In May, Neurxstem leased a clean room on our campus to start important brain tissue research. Their second hire was a neurological researcher who had found his way back home to Heath.

A national review of annual changes in apartment rentals found stark declines in San Francisco, and New York. Where did the increases go? Three of the top seven markets in the country were in Ohio. Another study found Ohio cities among the most popular destinations for relocations by millennials.

Upskilling efforts and training opportunities are another positive sign.

Thanks to support from the Licking County Commissioners and CARES Act funding, upskilling to better prepare for landing a job in manufacturing is offered under a full, 100% paid scholarship through C-TEC. The first classes of grads are filling the job openings. The classes remain open to others who sign up.

I’m thankful for the boost that will surely come to our growing job opportunities from job talk during holiday gatherings this year.

Don’t be muted on the Zoom call or let the tryptophan kick in before you share the signs of opportunity and ensure the return to Ohio and Licking County can begin.

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Rick Platt is the President and CEO of the Heath-Newark-Licking County Port Authority and a father of four who lives in Newark.

HEATH-NEWARK-LICKING COUNTY PORT AUTHORITY
OP-ED COLUMN

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 12, 2020

Leaning Into The Storm: Reshoring Manufacturing is Ohio’s Call to Duty

By: Rick Platt

Ohioans couldn’t get N95 masks into our hospitals. Business couldn’t buy PPE to stay open. States fought to get testing kits.

It didn’t stop with medical supplies.

Try to buy a bicycle during COVID? Good luck.

Many overseas-dependent products couldn’t be found on our shelves. Some seemingly simple items couldn’t be found because of one tiny component in the supply chain wasn’t available in our country.

Reshoring, the restoring of manufacturing supply chains to our North American shores, is imperative!

It’s also bipartisan. It’s clearly one of only a few issues upon which both sides of the aisle can agree—let’s bring manufacturing back to the U.S.

History shows us that issues can fade after an election though. As time passes and the early stages of the COVID nightmare fades from our memories, we must not forget the lessons learned at the beginning of this crisis. The critical need to restore manufacturing capability in our country is absolutely one of those lessons.

The demand is there too. A recent Bank of America survey found an astonishing 75% of global corporate respondents saw the need to bring their supply chains closer to home. The Wall Street Journal recently called middle America “the new emerging market.”

I believe Ohio is well-positioned to lead the nation in emerging stronger on the other side of this crisis by seizing upon our strengths as a state for manufacturing. We can answer the call in a crisis. It will take an all-Ohio, determined effort.

The factors that work to grow manufacturing are here. Energy, affordability, logistics, manufacturing culture, and, most of all, a strong workforce are Ohio’s strengths at a time when those strengths are needed by the nation.

The U.S. still produces 20% of the World’s manufactured goods. Ohio ranks third among states in manufacturing, and the sector remains the highest-paying and highest-impacting part of our Ohio economy.

Manufacturing has kept our economy strong throughout the pandemic. Governor Mike DeWine was right when he said to manufacturers, “You’ve kept our economy running in this challenging economic time.”

Reshoring of manufacturing has JobsOhio’s full attention. The non-profit economic development arm of Ohio is marketing our state as “an open and secure supply chain location.” When other states are cash-strapped and worried about their economic development capabilities being eroded by shrinking state budgets, JobsOhio is just the opposite. Investments are moving forward in the tens of millions for getting Ohio more ready to compete for advanced manufacturing job opportunities.

All development is local though. While the state has greatly invested resources to get more sites and buildings ready to go in the marketplace and focused more resources on worker retraining for in-demand jobs, it’s going to take an exponential effort by our local communities to deliver ready-to-go sites and buildings in order to realize this opportunity. Workforce readiness is key to being competitive too.

Our Port Authority industrial campus in Licking County has been a model. Our manufacturers, all essential companies, stayed open and stayed safe. Defense, energy, metals, testing labs, life sciences, and food production are all critical supply chain industries. We opened two new buildings to accept more investment and funded training programs to provide a certified manufacturing workforce to meet a growing manufacturing workforce demand.

Industry proved it can respond and be ready. Examples abound. The Ohio Manufacturing Alliance quickly formed. Nature’s One opened to make organic baby formula. Gathered Foods unveiled a protein-rich, shelf stable plant-based seafood product. IC3D printed faceshields with their fleet of 3D printers. Buckeye Mask made cotton face masks. The Ohio maker of Purel hand sanitizer, GOJO, expanded three times.

I’m bullish on manufacturing. Reshoring is going to happen, and it’s coming to the American Heartland.

Let’s be ready to answer the call to boost our manufacturing capacity and permanently grow our economy.

I’m convinced our best opportunities are ahead.

While some may use the analogy “weather the storm” to describe their economic response, I tend to think Ohio is poised to “lean into the storm” in response to the stormy economic challenges posed by the pandemic. It will be for naught, though, if it is not an inclusive, all-Ohio effort.

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