Industry Roundtable: Louisiana industry is booming. What is driving that growth, and what will the impact be?

MELODY LOCKWOOD
President and CEO, Livingston Economic Development Council

“For Livingston Parish, it’s really our location. So being between Baton Rouge and New Orleans and so close to the industrial corridor along the Mississippi, that makes us attractive, not necessarily for the heavy industry that’s located there, but for those support industries. So we are the concrete, the pipe, the steel, and then professional services, of course, it goes along with that and the workforce that feeds into all of those industries.

We have some of our concrete companies that got contracts with Meta, and so some of those may triple their sales in the next year or two because of that. So what we’re seeing the growth is in those support industries because they can’t operate, they can’t be built without our companies doing that.

So over this last year, all of our project announcements have been from existing companies. So we’re seeing them really reinvesting and expanding where they already have a successful workforce business environment in place.

For Livingston Parish specifically, we benefit from being part of that larger ecosystem of industry with transportation as well, being right on the interstate helps. Rail helps with that as well. The only thing that’s missing is the Mississippi River.””

KATHY TRAHAN
President and CEO, Alliance Safety Council

“Baton Rouge is in a strategic location. So we’re in a unique position where not only do we have the infrastructure, but we also have the pipelines, the logistics support on the lower Mississippi. So we have all these things that have converged to produce an opportunity for considerable growth.

Now, the economic development group has brought in a lot of new projects, and so there’s a lot of excitement around the growth of those projects. If we can create an infrastructure that’s going to support the manufacturing facilities and can quickly identify the gaps and train to those gaps, that’s something we haven’t done.

This has been a standing issue the entire time I’ve been in industry for more than 30 years is we always have a workforce shortage. Well, now if we do not prepare our workers for that, we’re going to see more of what we’re seeing in Northeast Louisiana where companies are coming from the Northeast to do those projects.

So if we don’t focus on the workforce infrastructure that’s supporting all these facilities and make sure that we can execute on those projects and keep those trained workers here, not import them from all over, because that money needs to stay here.

Right now with AI, we have an opportunity to connect all those systems in a very short period of time. We don’t have a lot of time to get ready for these projects.””

CONNIE FABRE
President and CEO, Greater Baton Rouge Industry Alliance

“I think that the current growth that we’re seeing is a culmination of several different things. It started in around 2012 when fracking opened up natural gas. That alerted the whole world that Louisiana is competitive globally, and we were able to attract projects due to that low price of natural gas.

So that started the ball rolling, and we had a great person in economic development with Stephen Moret who was very aggressive, put in LED FastStart, so some great new tools. And then after that, I think some of the incentives that the government have passed for new energy, that is certainly driving some of the new investments and also new technologies in being able to compress LNG and natural gas so that it can be exported.

Natural gas was very much of a local market until they were able to compress it. And we actually had plants built that were being built to import natural gas and they flipped those plants and made them into export facilities, and it changed everything.

And now this administration has been very aggressive and doing things differently. So I think they’re doing a great job of getting new projects.””

DAVID CRESSON
President and CEO, Louisiana Chemistry Association and Louisiana Chemistry Industrial Alliance

“If we’re talking about the reasons why all these announcements have decided they’re coming to Louisiana, it’s the natural resources, it’s the river, it is the great workforce we have here, it’s the infrastructure. We’ve got a governor and an administration who has made it clear to the world that we’re open for business.

The other thing that we don’t talk about enough here in Louisiana is we have available and affordable power that these companies all need. And the state has proven that we can deliver on that. The state has some of the most affordable industrial power in the country, and that is an enormous expense for these companies.

The other thing we have here in the state, we’re just blessed because we have six or eight of the top industrial contractors in the world based right here in Louisiana and Baton Rouge. That is an enormous resource for us here in the state.

We’ve got this attitude that we are open for business, we’ve got incredible resources, we’ve got infrastructure, an unbelievable port system here in the state of Louisiana, and this amazing network of industrial contractors that make it all go.”