State touts foreign-investment growth

PINE BLUFF — Arkansas jobs that are attributable to foreign investments in the state have grown by 41.5 percent, a growth rate that now leads the country, state officials said Friday.

Since 2002, nearly 47,000 workers have been employed in the state as a result of global investment, along with $4 billion in capital investments, according to numbers gathered by the Organization for International Investment, a Washington, D.C.-based business association.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson attributed the growth to the aggressive international marketing of the state’s business opportunities over the past two years. He, along with officials of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, have traveled to Tokyo, France, England, Germany, China and, most recently, Cuba, touting the state’s natural resources and agricultural possibilities.

And their efforts have borne fruit. Since 2015, the state has attracted three Chinese companies that are expected to create more than 1,400 manufacturing jobs.

“All from one province in China, Shandong province,” Hutchinson said during conference sponsored by Simmons Bank on the future of the Arkansas Delta.

“We’ve recruited three industries here to Arkansas just since I’ve been governor,” he said. “That’s success for our state, and it’s reflected in the most recent announcement in Forrest City.”

Last week, the Chinese textile manufacturing company Shandong Ruyi Technology Group announced that it would be moving into a shuttered facility in Forrest

●

City, hiring up to 800 workers who will earn at least $15.25 per hour, and investing $410 million into the building. Sanyo Manufacturing Corp. vacated the facility in 2007.

The textile plant is expected to process 200,000 tons of cotton per year, which would “impact all of the Delta,” Hutchinson said.

Michael Preston, executive director of the economic development commission, said that the first 50 to 75 people hired will be sent to Ruyi’s facilities in China for training.

Other Shandong-based companies that recently have announced expansions in Arkansas include Suzhou Tianyuan Garments Co., which will hire 400 full-time employees and invest $20 million, and Sun Paper Co.,

which will invest more than $1 billion for a bio-products mill that will create 250 jobs.

“Obviously the Arkansas Delta is on the map, we’ve done our work. We have a lot more to go but this is a big win,” Preston said.

With the success so far rendered by raising the state’s profile in international markets, Preston and Hutchinson said it’s an economic-development strategy they plan to sharpen in the future.

The governor said he plans to travel back to Germany and France later this year, as well as Shandong province for a third time, “because we have so many relationships now.”

At this stage, Preston said the No. 1 priority now will be ensuring the state can provide an educated and capable workforce in face of the state’s historically low 3.5 percent unemployment rate.

“We have the jobs,” Preston said. “We have a lot of momentum now, but we have to focus on what’s next in making ourselves better.”

“We have to focus on educating our workforce. We have to find workers, that’s our challenge now in economic development,” he said, stressing the importance of computer coding and technology training.