Home to manufacturing heavyweights such as TRW, Eaton Corp, Goodyear, and Sherwin-Williams, the region’s private sector has consistently played a leading role in making the region highly competitive on a global scale, by ensuring that the region is chock-full of resources to assist businesses in their international growth efforts. The region is also home to growing financial services giants National City and KeyBank, as well as Progressive Insurance and FirstEnergy. A look at some of the international companies that have recently relocated to the region, the scope and variety of information, incentives, and other assistance available shows that Northeast Ohio plays to win in the international business arena.

One of these recent wins involves St. Ives, general commercial printers with headquarters in London. St. Ives recently bought the Perlmutter printing plant on E.49th Street in Cleveland at the moment when the privately held, family-owned Perlmutter was looking to sell the company. The result is a clear gain for the city of Cleveland, having landed a prestigious company from “across the pond” willing to invest and improve the facility and boost the workforce.

Clays, the largest book manufacturer in the United Kingdom – they are responsible for printing the Harry Potter series – and Burrups, the oldest financial printers in the U.K., make up St. Ives. “In the last two-and-a-half years, St. Ives has invested $15 million to $18 million in a new 53,000 square foot facility, which we added to the existing Perlmutter plant,” stated Gary Davis, executive vice president of St. Ives. He added, “the Cleveland investment has been a very positive addition for St. Ives. Cleveland is a good place for our company to grow and have access to other key printing resources – all in the midst of a very favorable business climate.”

Cleveland is the latest United States location for St. Ives, joining Rochester, N.Y., Hollywood, and Miami. The Cleveland facility houses 500 employees, greatly prized by the company for their high degree of skill, deep experience, and Midwestern work ethic. Davis commented that it is not uncommon to have pressmen with 20 to 40 years of experience – an increasing rarity in today’s job market.

In the last 15 years, the Greater Cleveland area became home for 53 new business projects, totaling $276.2 million in new capital investments, according to Jim Kroeger, senior director of business development at the Greater Cleveland Growth Association. The region witnessed a flurry of activity since 2000, with 12 new projects totaling $136.8 million in investments. Kroeger attributes this success with foreign firms to a variety of key factors, such as Northeast Ohio’s proximity to the majority of North America’s largest markets (East Coast, southeast Canada, and the Midwest), a good transportation infrastructure, and the size of Northeast Ohio’s regional marketplace.

Cleveland has also earned a national reputation for the high degree of cooperation between its public and private sectors, a strong asset in molding its savvy and aggressive international business community. Its Chamber of Commerce, the Growth Association, is regarded as the “gold standard” in business assistance throughout the United States. In the international area, it led an effort to combine its own resources with those of the City of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, and the Port Authority to create the World Trade Center Cleveland (WTCC). It is the premier international business services organization in the region. At a relatively low cost, area businesses receive customized information and counseling on the global markets of their choice.

According to David Yen, executive director of the WTCC, the most promising new targets for trade and investment growth are China, India, and Israel, with Canada continuing to be an extremely important source of trade and investment as Northeast Ohio’s top trading partner. Meanwhile, Ohio’s trade with China has increased a whopping 80 percent since 1999. China has proven to be a good supply source for many Northeast Ohio businesses, and the WTCC has been aggressively forging institutional and company-to-company partnerships there since 1997. These new ties hold the potential for possible new investment opportunities in the region, now that the Chinese government has loosened many restrictions on overseas investment. Northeast Ohio promotes itself as a lower-cost, less-congested, high quality of life area with a sophisticated international business community – an easy alternative to crowded coastal cities both East and West.

The new twist is that area business leaders in partnership with the region’s top universities encourage students from these countries to study in Northeast Ohio. Then, by tapping into the local Chinese, Indian, and Jewish communities and identifying students from these countries at area universities such as Case Western Reserve, Cleveland State, and John Carroll, the Greater Cleveland corporate and civic leadership intends to retain the international talent that comes to the region to study in these nationally known programs. WTCC and the Growth Association are partnering with the Cleveland Foundation to create the final link in this strategy – offering these students a permanent job in one of the area’s many international companies.

India, as the second-fastest growing market for Ohio exports, is the other developing country market focus for the WTCC. In the case of India and its local community, the region can draw on a highly literate, affluent, and savvy group of businesspeople. The attraction and retention of Indian students are a high priority, especially in the fields of engineering, biosciences, and information technology.

The choice of Israel as a target market starts persuasively with the same logic as that for China and India – by utilizing and nurturing the large and influential local Jewish community and following its strong existing networks with Israel. While Israel’s national market is a small fraction of the size of the Chinese and Indian markets, it has other attractive features that make it a desirable target. It has the highest concentration of Ph.D.s in the world, and not surprisingly then, it has developed into a source for young, energetic high-tech companies. Through the strong leadership of the Ohio-Israel Chamber of Commerce, Cleveland is now host to two new Israeli bioscience companies – Quark Biotech Inc. and Simbionix Corp. In January 2003, Cleveland hosted a trade mission from Israel comprised of 16 companies. The mission’s purpose was to explore collaboration with other companies and institutions through a wide variety of vehicles, such as clinical trial, joint research, securing capital, and identification of manufacturers’ representatives and distributors for Israeli products in Northeast Ohio. Since the mission, MBG and Imadent have decided to locate to the Greater Cleveland area. MBG develops pharmaceutical distribution systems, while Imadent deals with advanced dental equipment, such as an ultrasonic imaging device.

World-class medical institutions such as The Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals have helped create critical mass in the biosciences field, and again, Cleveland’s business leadership has responded.

Bill Sanford, former CEO of Mentor, Ohio-based Steris Corp., manufacturer of healthcare equipment, now heads up BioEnterprise Corp. BioEnterprise was created to serve as a high-tech incubator for biomedical and biotech companies, and assists in the commercialization of new technologies coming out of universities such as Case Western Reserve, as well as those emerging out of The Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals. The chairman of Simbionix Corp., Avshalom Horan, is in the midst of helping BioEnterprise and the Ohio-Israel Chamber scout for prospects for the January 2003 mission from Israel. BioEnterprise can offer these fledgling companies help in securing venture capital, creating business plans, and finding partners.

Akron, home to Goodyear, Inc. has its own impressive record as an attractive location for foreign investment. According to Bob Bowman, VP of economic development for the Greater Akron Chamber of Commerce, more than $41 million in European investment has made its way to Akron’s three-county area (Summit, Portage, and Medina) since 1994. This represents 13 companies from a variety of countries, including Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. The Akron Chamber maintains an unwavering commitment to wooing companies from this part of the world through its presence at two world-class trade shows. The first is the annual Hanover Fair in Germany, the world’s largest trade show, and the second is the K-Show in Dusseldorf, Germany, the world’s largest plastics show, held every three years. The State of Ohio shows its commitment to the region by providing consistent financial support to Akron’s efforts at these two shows. The Akron Chamber also offers export assistance through its staff and its affiliates, the local Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) chapter and the United States Export Assistance Center. (Both organizations maintain their offices in Akron Chamber of Commerce.)

Plastics – yes – continues to hold an important key to Akron’s future, both as a leading export from the region and a draw for potential investors from abroad.

Highlighting the pull of Akron and its global reputation as a haven of polymer research, new technologies, and products is the recent investment of M & G Polymers USA, LLC, of Milan, Italy, in a new resin research facility in Sharon Center, Ohio. M & G Polymers manufactures PET (polyethylene terephthlate), an important ingredient in the manufacture of soft-drink bottles. The $1 billion-plus international company also has facilities in Mexico and the United Kingdom, as well as at their other United States location in West Virginia.

Delane Richardson, director of research & development Americas for M & G, explained that the other possible choices for the company’s investment were Charlotte, N.C., and Houston. A major reason for choosing Sharon Center in Medina, near Akron, was the need to attract and retain highly skilled, experienced employees in the polymer field. She specifically pointed to a certain Ph.D. in engineering and another Ph.D. in chemistry as the kinds of prospects the company placed a priority on retaining. The national reputations of the University of Akron and Case Western Reserve University in polymer research were key factors as sources of new recruits and as a pull for other potential candidates to locate here. Medina’s excellent school reputation and idyllic Midwestern town ambience – complete with center square and gazebo – were the icing on the cake. Richardson, a native of Tennessee, glowingly described the high quality of life available in the Medina area, its family orientation, and its top ranking for public schools in the region.

The state of Ohio’s Department of Economic Development worked with Richardson and provided incentives in the form of grants for hiring new employees. The move into their new facility was complete in August 2002, and their staff of 41 is up and running, and integrating itself easily into the community.

The University of Akron, along with the State of Ohio and Akron’s corporate community, have taken further steps to secure its future in polymers through the creation of its Ohio Polymer Strategy Council and the Ohio Polymers Enterprise Development Corp. (OPED). The Council sets the agenda for this key industry in the state by serving as the governor’s main adviser. The OPED undertakes the tricky process of helping to commercialize the breakthrough technologies coming out of the region’s research organizations and bringing them to market profitably, similar to Cleveland’s BioEnterprise Corp., but in the polymers field. Akron easily rivals any other area of the country with its tradition, experience, and commitment to the polymers industry and its future applications.

This sharp focus on global opportunities doesn’t dissipate by the time you reach the suburbs of Northeast Ohio either. The seven counties surrounding Cleveland and Akron (Summit, Portage, Ashtabula, Stark, Mahoning, Columbiana, and Trumbull) pooled their resources to create NEOTEC, the Northeast Ohio Trade and Economic Consortium, in 1996. NEOTEC responds to the needs of the region’s global companies in the area of lowering tariffs and duties, and expands the logistics and transportation capabilities available in Northeast Ohio.

NEOTEC is underway with an initiative to expand the nearly 5,000 acres and 13 sites of the current Foreign-Trade Zone (FTZ) up to 6,000 acres and 18 different sites. Already in the top 20 percent of FTZs nationally, ranked by dollar volume, this would establish Northeast Ohio as one of the largest FTZs in the country – another indication of the growing heft of the region’s international business activity. Looking at related innovations in transportation that would bolster the FTZ expansion, recent analysis indicates that the ability to bring international cargo directly into Northeast Ohio and clear customs there, rather than through the traditional East Coast locations, will enable area companies to deliver their products significantly faster to their large customer base between Boston and Washington, D.C.

NEOTEC has also helped to spawn the Northeast Ohio Logistics Network to flesh out the region’s intermodal capabilities and to put it on an equal footing with regions such as South Florida and Baltimore-Washington. An outgrowth of this initiative is the bundling of its members’ needs for transportation services in negotiating lower rates from truck, rail, and steamship companies.

All this means that it is likely to see increased traffic of goods utilizing ports on the Gulf of Mexico straight up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers to Northeast Ohio. The overcrowding, congestion and high prices of the East Coast auger well for this shift in international cargo, and the region is ready to handle it and take advantage of it. Northeast Ohio’s long tradition as a manufacturing center still sharply shapes its present and future. It is second only to the Detroit region in the portion of the regional economy made up by manufacturers – without the benefit of having the world headquarters for “the big two-and-a-half” (Ford, General Motors, and DaimlerChrysler) – the United States’ largest automotive companies. Of the seven industry clusters identified by the Growth Association as the industry engines for the future, four are in the manufacturing sector: automotive, metals, polymers, and the “ICE” industries (instruments, controls, and electronics).

A fifth, information technology, has a different structure in the region, illustrated by the following: of the 75,000 people employed in high-tech occupations, three-fourths of these employees work inside traditional companies. Rather than a plethora of small, high-risk I.T. companies, the larger manufacturers and service firms mold the I.T. innovations in Northeast Ohio – and can make the necessary investments for these innovations to take flight.

Of particular note are the nearly 300 foreign-owned companies that have decided to invest and operate in Northeast Ohio. Multinational manufacturer ABB of Germany employs 1,200 in Wickliffe, Ohio; DaimlerChrysler of Germany and Detroit employs 2,300 at their stamping plant in Twinsburg, Ohio; Nestle´ of Switzerland operates out of Solon, Ohio, with 1,865 employees; and Sweden-based AGA Gas has 1,100 employees in its Independence, Ohio, operation. Germany-based Ben Venue company just last year made a $84.5 million investment in Bedford, Ohio, and added 300 new jobs to the local economy. Additionally, some of America’s largest manufacturers have a huge presence in the region as well. The region’s largest private-sector employer continues to be Ford Motor Co., which recently made a $350 million investment in its Brook Park, Ohio, facility.

But where would you probably call if you were an international company looking into a possible relocation, new office, or greenfield operation in Northeast Ohio? Chances are you would call your banker or accountant and, additionally, either the Greater Cleveland Growth Association or the Greater Akron Chamber or the World Trade Center Cleveland for information and assistance.

The region’s service sector is hard to beat. From banks to insurance companies to freight forwarders to consultants – this sector has had to become smarter and more sophisticated to keep pace with its many international manufacturing clients, who long ago expanded into international markets. As with other, much larger metropolitan areas in the United States, the line between where “domestic” business ends and “international” business begins is increasingly blurred – a sure sign that Northeast Ohio will continue to grab a bigger piece of the international pie than many of its better-known rivals in the Sunbelt and the coasts, East and West.

Cheryl Federline has been an international trade expert for 15 years, working in the corporate, not-for-profit, and government sectors. She lived in Cleveland from 1991 to 1999 and now resides in her hometown of Haddonfield, NJ. Contact her at cfederline@hotmail.com.