Northern Ireland’s conveyor belt fabricator Smiley Monroe is partnering with Kentucky to create a factory in Simpson County. The two million dollar project will be the first foreign facility for the company and looks to be an amazing opportunity for both the company and Kentucky. According to the press release put out by Think Kentucky, the state’s economic development coordinator, the 40 year old company was concerned about the economic uncertainty caused by Brexit and wanted to develop facilities in an environment that offered more stability and allowed for them to protect the company’s export capacity. Kentucky presented a location with a workforce skilled in manufacturing and a route for the company to lower those barriers to trade that made them less competitive in their space.
Smiley Monroe is leasing a 63,000 square foot building in Simpson County with the goal of beginning production by January of 2020.
This is an incredible opportunity for Kentucky, Simpson County, and Smiley Monroe. Simpson’s Mayor Dixon cited in his statement that this was the 10th international company to relocated to Simpson County. This is keeping with the push by Kentucky EDO agents to promote the state as a great location for manufacturing.
Victories like this always come at a high level of effort as foreign companies have to decide from among opportunities using business intelligence that is collected across multiple sources. Part of why StageXchange's EDO outreach program has been so successful has been the fact that we provide a platform that can compare apples to apples in order to rate and rank opportunities for investors.
