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Two bits of news on Houston's economic diversity today,
First, Mill Steel Company opens a Flagship distribution center in Houston
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., June 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Mill Steel Co., one of the nation's largest distributors of flat-rolled carbon steel, expanded its operations and geographic presence with the opening of a new facility in Houston, Texas.
Mill Steel is now operational with slitting and cut-to-length capabilities in their 100,000 square-foot facility. This premier building houses three production lines with the capability of slitting 50,000 lb master coils up to 60" wide and .015-.250" thick. The company plans to add additional production lines in the near future. With these aggressive expansion plans, this will become one of Mill Steel's flagship service centers.
Here is an interesting report from EMSI Research which ranks regional talent attraction competitiveness. See how Houston (Harris County) ranked in their 2017 report.
Oil and Gas companies are diversifying away from fossil fuels into renewables and other energy solutions, increasing Houston's economic diversity.
Shell Energy North America, part of energy giant Royal Dutch Shell, plans to buy The Woodlands-based MP2 Energy LLC.
The deal is expected to close in the third quarter, according to a June 29 press release. Financial terms were not disclosed in the initial announcement.
MP2 will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Shell Energy North America, and its existing management team will continue to lead MP2 from The Woodlands.
MP2 Energy manages power plants; provides retail power to customers in Texas, Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania; and provides other services such as managing demand response, solar and morMeanwhile, Shell Energy North America’s retail energy business targets large commercial and industrial customers on the U.S. West Coast.
As Shell continues to expand its energy focus, we will strive to bring customers ever more innovative commodity solutions, including the deployment of new energy management tools," Glenn Wright, vice president for Shell Energy North America, said in the release.
Although MP2 is a smaller company than many others Shell has acquired over the years, the deal is part of a trend among major integrated oil companies diversifying amid broader efforts to slow climate change, an analyst told the Houston Chronicle.
Shell has been leading the way among those companies moving away from oil and to gas, which power-related acquisitions would complement, the analyst said.
July 12--The Houston Spaceport has started searching for a design-build firm to develop the roads and utilities needed to attract a cluster of aerospace businesses to Ellington Airport.
Before launching spacecraft into zero gravity, officials want to create a community of companies that can invent, develop and manufacture space technologies. This design-build firm will lay the necessary groundwork -- roads, water lines, communication cables, etc. -- to attract those companies.
"We are moving forward with the actual construction of the infrastructure that we've been planning for," said Arturo Machuca, general manager of Ellington and the Houston Spaceport.
If the timeline goes as planned, the Houston Airport System will ask the City Council to approve its selection of a design-build firm Dec. 6. Once construction begins, the project should take about 12 months.
Wireless tower operator Crown Castle to buy Lightower for $7.1B to expand city-center cell networks
Wireless tower operator Crown Castle International agreed Tuesday to buy Lightower Fiber Networks for about $7.1 billion, a move to expand its cell services in crowded urban areas across the U.S.
Houston-based Crown Castle will pay all cash for Lightower, which is privately owned by private equity firms Berkshire Partners, Pamlico Capital and other investors.
Lightower owns or operates about 32,000 miles of fiber -- a type of telecommunications cable that is said to transmit data in high speeds -- located in big cities in the Northeast, including Boston, New York and Philadelphia. After the deal is completed, Crown Castle will own or operate about 60,000 miles of fiber in all of the top 10 and 23 of the top 25 cities, it said.
People making tangible stuff and making other stuff better, adding to Houston's economic diversity...!
Making room for makers
In a world where software is sexy, TX/RX wants to teach people to build things again.
A few years ago, a researcher at the Texas Medical Center was ready to use a multimillion-dollar machine for imaging rat brains — except she needed it for mice, whose heads were too small for the machine's holes. Spray foam and duct tape didn't fix the problem.
Near desperation, the researcher found Roland von Kurnatowski III, who runs a nonprofit fabrication workshop in Houston's East End called TX/RX Labs. His staff used a 3D printer to forge inserts sized for mouse heads. Crisis averted.
"That's not a complex problem to solve," said von Kurnatowski, a tall, garrulous former application developer for JPMorgan who now comes to work in grease-stained pants and boots. "The problem is, they have a bunch of medical researchers, and they're trying to task them with a set of problems that are meant for mechanical, electrical and material engineers."
TX/RX — which stands for "transmit/receive" — has quietly supplied solutions such as mouse-head inserts to medical researchers and other innovators for eight years, emerging as a center for startups, small manufacturers and people who just want to make stuff. As the city forges a strategy to energize Houston's tech scene with tax incentives and an "innovation district," von Kurnatowski wants to make sure that entrepreneurs and engineers who specialize in hardware are not forgotten in the hype around software and mobile apps.
This is going to be a sight to see when these cranes arrive in the fall...
July 24, 2017 08:25 PM Eastern Daylight Time
HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Three new Super Post-Panamax cranes bound for Port Houston’s Barbours Cut Container Terminal departed Shanghai, China Sunday, aboard the ZHEN HUA 13. Along the journey these 405 feet tall cranes will travel with booms fully raised. Once they reach their destination after a two and a half month journey, the cranes are slated to replace three older ones at Barbours Cut.
“considerable improvements are being made by Port Houston as we strategically prepare for expected growth.” Tweet this
These cranes are just a part of a $700 million modernization program under way at Barbours Cut to increase cargo-handling efficiency and capacity. In addition to new cranes, other improvements (including wharf and container yard reconfiguration measures) are expected to increase terminal capacity from 1.2 million to 2 million TEUS, adding to the 14 ship-to-shore wharf cranes and 44 rubber-tired gantry cranes (RTGs) currently operating there.
An airlock destined for the International Space Station sat near the bottom of a 40-foot pool as astronauts hoisted bulky suits around its curvatures. NASA was testing the station's first complex fixture - an element that could one day be attached to a commercial space station - that is privately owned.
"If we're going to see an economy develop in low-Earth orbit … the commercial sector has got to be able to provide and operate things like this," said Mike Read, manager of the International Space Station's commercial space utilization office.
That's the goal of Webster-based NanoRacks, which has evolved from getting experiments on the space station to developing an airlock that will help deploy satellites. Ultimately, NanoRacks hopes its roughly $12 million airlock will be detached from the government-owned space station and reattached to one that is commercially owned and operated.
"The goal of this is to continue to build the marketplace so there's more commercial users of ISS," said Brock Howe, NanoRacks' project manager for the airlock. "And then, at the point when the government is ready to retire the big space station, there are a lot of people using it that can then justify the price of having a commercial space station."
Houston’s Bayport Terminal Set to Handle Larger Ships
zoomImage Courtesy: Port of Houston With the completion of maintenance dredging of the Bayport channel, the Bayport Container Terminal in Texas is now capable of handling 45-foot draft vessels, according to the Port of Houston Authority.
The Bayport channel is accepted and will be maintained by the US Army Corps of Engineers at a depth of 48.5 feet mean lower low water (MLLW), the authority added.
With this development, Bayport joins Barbours Cut terminal to take full advantage of the Houston Ship Channel depth.
In late September 2015, Barbours Cut terminal was granted authorization by the Houston Pilots Association to receive Post-Panamax vessels with a 45-foot operating draft after a project to widen and deepen the Barbours Cut channel by additional 5 feet and upgrade the terminal was completed.
Barbours Cut recently established a new record for container lifts from one vessel when 4,198 moves were completed working with the 5,000 TEU COSCO Boston.
Port Houston handled more than 16 million tons of cargo for the year, an increase of 12 percent over last year, driven by a 15 percent growth in container volume.
Research lab in NW Houston adding to Houston's economic diversity !
Houston lab working to connect the internet's many dots
New lab takes on the internet of things for Hewlett Packard Enterprise
At a new lab in Houston, engineers are piloting ways to use data from street sensors to alert drivers to flood hazards, industrial pump systems to predict when parts will break and wireless thermometers to automatically update patient records at hospitals.
By extracting data from everyday objects in this way, Hewlett Packard Enterprise is hoping to capitalize on the growing tech segment known as the internet of things. The year-old Houston lab in northwest Houston - HPE's first devoted to the field - made its public debut on Monday.
"There's a belief that inside things there's pent-up information that's valuable," said Tom Bradicich, HPE's vice president and general manager of servers, converged edge and internet of things systems. "And with that valuable information, we can have improved business outcomes, improved scientific outcomes and improved societal outcomes."
HPE plans to open two more internet of things labs in Singapore and Geneva, Switzerland.
Houston and Dallas should follow the California model. Invest heavily in its universities and turn out the best and brightest. Develop more local funding for startups. California has no magic that can't be replicated. Houston is strong in engineering, Dallas in finance.
This post is so laughable. Say this to any native born Texan and you will not have to wait long for a negative reaction.
Over the past decade, approximately five million people have moved away from California.
I don’t have anything against California or the people that live there. It is such a beautiful place, and it once held so much promise. Unfortunately that promise has been shattered, and there is a mass exodus out of the state as families flee the horrific nightmare that California is in the process of becoming. Here are some reasons why...
A. Out of all 50 states, the state of California has been ranked as the worst state for business for 12 years in a row
In what is sounding like a broken record, California once again ranked dead last in Chief Executive magazine’s annual Best and Worst States for Business survey of CEOs – as it has all 12 years the survey has been conducted. Texas, meanwhile, earned the top spot for the 12th straight year.
Among the survey’s subcategories, the 513 CEOs from across the nation ranked California 50th in taxation and regulation, 35th in workforce quality and 26th in living environment, which includes cost of living, the education system and state and local attitudes toward business. Notably, California placed worst among the nine states in the Western region in all three categories.
B. The state government in Sacramento seems to go a little bit more insane with each passing session. This time around, they are talking about going to a single-payer healthcare system for the entire state that would cost California taxpayers 40 billion dollars a year…
C. The traffic in the major cities just keeps getting worse and worse. According to USA Today, Los Angeles now has the worst traffic in the entire world, and San Francisco is not far behind.
D. A lot of money is being made in Silicon Valley these days (at least for now), but poverty is also exploding in the state. In desperation, homeless people are banding together to create large tent cities all over the state, and the L.A. City Council recently asked Governor Jerry Brown “to declare homelessness a statewide emergency“.
E. California is one of the most litigious states in the entire nation. According to the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, the “lawsuit climate” in California is ranked 47th out of all 50 states.
F. California has some of the most ridiculous housing prices in the entire country. Due to a lack of affordable housing rents have soared to wild extremes in San Francisco, where one poor engineer was actually paying $1,400 a month to live in a closet.
G. All over the state, key infrastructure is literally falling to pieces. Governor Jerry Brown recently issued a list of key projects that needed to be done as soon as possible, and the total price tag for that list was 100 billion dollars. Of course that list didn’t even include the Oroville Dam, and we all saw what happened there.
H. Radiation from the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster continues to cross the ocean and wash up along the California coastline. The impact of this crisis on the health of those living along the west coast could potentially be felt for generations. (kinda explains all the nut-bag ideologies doesn't it)?
So in conclusion please do not take offense when I tell you that you can stick your California model where the sun does not shine....Go carpet bag somewhere else and **** that state up.
Sincerely,
Native Texan
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Research lab in NW Houston adding to Houston's economic diversity !
