ATLANTA — Competing in today’s fast-paced global marketplace is often a matter of who can deliver their goods most efficiently and reliably. It’s called logistics, one of the world’s largest and most complex industries.
Perhaps the best indication of the importance of logistics to business — both global and domestic — is the exponential growth of the Georgia Logistics Summit.
Begun in 2009 by Savannahian Page Siplon, executive director of the Georgia Center for Logistics, the Atlanta-based conference has grown each year beyond even his expectations.
“We started out with a luncheon attended by 450 people, a lot more than we had anticipated,” Siplon said.
The next year, attendance nearly doubled, drawing 800 people to the Cobb Galleria. Siplon expanded the event to an all-day summit in 2011, bringing in 1,200 attendees from around the Southeast.
Outgrowing the Galleria, the event moved to the Georgia World Congress Center in 2012, where it drew 1,600 participants from 28 states and seven countries, including Turkey, Germany, Peru and Israel.
Now a two-day event, this year’s summit registration numbers topped out at just over 2,300, with 35 states and 11 foreign companies, an illustration, Siplon said as the summit opened Tuesday, that while Georgia is all about logistics, logistics isn’t just about Georgia.
In fact, first up on Tuesday’s agenda was a session on “International Logistics: Partnerships and Possibilities,” featuring three major U.S. trade partners — Canada, India and Japan.
Among the things conference-goers learned:
• Japan is working hard to attract foreign direct investment, with the greatest incentives outside of Tokyo, according to Trevin Dye of the Japan External Trade Organization, which offers support and business incubators to companies looking to get established in Japan.
• With a population of 1.2 billion — half of them under 25 — and a growing middle class, India is poised to become the fourth-largest economy in the world. The U.S. already does a $100 billion trade in goods and services with India and that is projected to go to $1 trillion.
• Canada and the United States are the world’s largest trading partners, with $330 billion in goods and services moving from Canada to the U.S., while $300 billion moves from the U.S. to Canada each year. Georgia and Canada exchanged more than$10 billion in goods last year.
With the country’s fourth-largest deepwater port, the world’s busiest airport, a well-designed highway and rail system, Georgia is a major player in logistics, one of the main reasons companies looking to relocate look to Georgia.
That was the subject of Tuesday’s final session, as new-to-Georgia companies Starbucks and Baxter and expanding companies Toyo Tires and Southwire — together representing $1.6 billion in investment and 2,600 new jobs for the state — came together to talk about growth and expansion in Georgia.
While they all agreed incentives were important, not one company cited that as the ultimate deal maker.
For Baxter International, a biopharmaceutical company building a plant in Covington, it was that 65 percent of its patient base is east of the Rockies, said Sophia Sharp-Donaldson, senior director of Baxter’s global supply chain.
“Also, the East Coast ocean access, the Atlanta airport, the availability of temperature-sensitive ground transportation and the proximity to key suppliers were factors,” she said.
For Starbucks, which is building its biggest capital project ever — a $172 million plant — near Augusta, it was all about a tech-oriented workforce and schools,” said Starbucks site engineer John Stephenson.
“Good infrastructure was also a factor,” he said.
James Hawk, chairman of Toyo Tires, a Japanese manufacturer with $4 billion in annual sales, said the Port of Savannah was key in his company’s decision to build its first manufacturing plant in North America in White, Ga.
“Not only do we have raw material coming in through the port and finished product going out, we have proprietary equipment that we bring in through Savannah,” he said.
“Logistics played an important part in our decision, as did Georgia QuickStart,” Hawk added.
For expanding Georgia technology company Southwire, logistics was also important
“In Georgia, we have good transportation infrastructure, affordable energy and we can reach 80 percent of the country in two days or less,” said Stu Thorn, Southwire President and CEO.
“There’s a reason Site Selection Magazine named Georgia the No. 1 state in the country for business.”