Houston's economic diversity Thread .. (Dallas, San Antonio: credit, theater, schools)

[JoninATX]

Port of Houston expects another record-breaking year for containers

By Andrea Rumbaugh
October 25, 2016

The Port of Houston Authority is expecting to surpass its 2015 record for container traffic, executive director Roger Guenther said Tuesday during the monthly Port Commission meeting.

Port of Houston expects another record-breaking year for containers - Houston Chronicle

[JoninATX]

Global plastics distributor nabs 200 acres in southeast Houston

By Cara Smith
Oct. 25. 2016

A global plastics distribution company purchased 200 acres in Houston's Cedar Port Distribution Park, the largest master-planned rail- and barge-served industrial park in the nation.

Ravago Americas, a subsidiary of Belgium-based Ravago, bought the land from TGS Cedar Port Partners, according to a release from Houston-based NAI Partners. Ravago Americas will develop a 1.5 million-square-foot distribution and manufacturing campus on the land, according to the release.

http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/n...-acres-in.html

[Jack Lance]

Specialty chemicals and textile effects, that's economic diversity.

Huntsman Corp., a chemical maker based in The Woodlands, said Friday it has started the process to spin off its specialty chemical business and create a new publicly traded company.

The company, which would make pigments, additives and textile effects, would begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange within the first half of 2017, Huntsman said.

The new company would focus largely on titanium dioxide chemical, called TiO2, which is used as a pigment for everything from food coloring and paints to coatings and sunscreen.

Huntsman to spin off specialty chemicals business - Houston Chronicle

[Jack Lance]

Wireless and fiber communication services, that's economic diversity....

A Houston-based wireless infrastructure company wants to connect with a fiber services provider.
Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE: CCI) plans to acquire FPL FiberNet Holdings LLC and certain other subsidiaries of Juno Beach, Florida-based NextEra Energy Inc. (NYSE: NEE) for about $1.5 billion, according to a release. The cash deal is expected to close in the first half of 2017.

Crown Castle is the nation's largest provider of shared wireless infrastructure. The company boasts about 40,000 towers and 17,000 miles of fiber-supporting small cells.

Over the past five years, Crown Castle has made more than $10 billion in acquisitions, Brown told the Houston Business Journal in a recent Q&A.

Crown Castle is the 34th-largest Houston-based public company, according to HBJ research. The company reported around $3.66 billion in 2015 revenue and about 2,700 employees.
http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/n...-services.html

[Jack Lance]

Hospitality and leisure , Houston based company expands again.

Tilman Fertitta has agreed to purchase New York-based hospitality group BR Guest, a move that will add nearly two dozen restaurants to his empire Fertitta owns Houston-based Landry’s, a hospitality group that operates more then 500 restaurant and entertainment venues. Its brands include Landry’s Seafood, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., Morton’s The Steakhouse and Rainforest Cafe.

BR Guest operates nearly 25 restaurants in four states, including 15 in Manhattan.

“We’re just excited to be there,” Fertitta told the Chronicle on Tuesday. “It will give us a great presence in Manhattan.”

https://www.pressreader.com/usa/hous...82080571407466

[Jack Lance]

Auto's and chilled imports, adding to Houston's economic diversity

The Port of Houston Authority is converting its failed cruise terminal into an auto processing facility expected to handle 36,000 imported vehicles over the next three years, officials announced Wednesday.

"We've taken this facility and now it's going to be productive," said Ricky Kunz, chief commercial officer for the port authority. "It's going to produce jobs, and it's going to produce economic growth and benefit for our region."

The port authority has signed a three-year contract with Auto Warehousing Co. to import vehicles, provide after-market upgrades and deliver them to dealerships.

Kunz said Auto Warehousing expects to create 25 jobs initially and about 150 by the time it is fully operational, not including new jobs among longshoremen, truck drivers and the like. Its first ship will arrive in December.

Longoria said it's part of the Port Authority's initiative to diversify its business lines.
Another area of such diversification is the expansion of refrigerated facilities on land owned by the Port Authority that has access to the Bayport Container Terminal.

Chilled imports
This will ideally attract more chilled commodity imports, such as fresh fruit and produce.
"This is truly a win-win for our region, bringing fresh and less expensive produce to our consumer base while creating additional good-paying jobs," Longoria said.
Failed Bayport cruise terminal gets new life with auto imports - Houston Chronicle

[Jack Lance]

Economic diversity is breaking out all over the Greater Houston economy,

On the edge of northwest Houston, in a low-lying and nondescript factory complex, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has for decades pumped out different versions of the same product: the humble forklift.

"Everything we have is touched by a forklift," said Ken Barina, who leads the forklift division of Japanese mega-conglomerate. Forklifts for warehouses, docks, construction sites, forklifts the size of elephants, electric forklifts that slide by with barely a sound.

This factory, however, has undergone major changes of late. Mitsubishi has purchased smaller forklift companies and merged them into what's now the world's third-biggest supplier. It has sped up production by adding robots, but continues to hire more people, as new models are developed and released to satisfy rising North American demand.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is making an audacious bet on America - and Texas in particular - as it seeks to consolidate production, shorten supply lines and source components domestically rather than from overseas.

Last year, the company opened a $100 million factory in Pearland that makes compressors for the petrochemical industry. This year, it moved its U.S. headquarters from New York to Houston and already employs 1,200 in Texas. Now, the company is shopping for a location in the Houston area to build another factory, about which it would not give further details.
Mitsubishi, expanding locally, bets on a less integrated world - Houston Chronicle


Team, a fast-growing industrial services company, has extended its Sugar Land headquarters lease in a deal that boosts its space by more than 75 percent.

The company, which occupies 34,500 square feet in the Sugar Creek office complex, will take an additional 26,500 square feet, according to the landlord. The new lease runs for 12 more years.

Team moved its headquarters from Alvin to 13131 S. Dairy Ashford in Sugar Land in 2012. The company has grown through acquisitions, including Furminite Corp. in March and DK Amans Valve and Qualspec Group last year. Team's revenue totaled $877 million in the first nine months of 2016, a 31 percent rise over the same period last year.
Deal of the Week: Industrial services company Team signs up for more space - Houston Chronicle


Waste Management’s new CEO, James C. Fish Jr., wants to kick up the technology of trash collection. The Houston-based company has already increased route efficiencies and boosted online services, but Fish wants to further explore augmented reality for technicians and innovation to replace landfills.

“If we don’t keep up with technology, there’s always a risk that somebody develops a disruptive technology that upsets our business model,” Fish said.
https://www.pressreader.com/usa/hous...82961039709313

[Jack Lance]

Commercial space industry meeting portends a future of economic growth and diversity in Houston.

Space And Terrestrial Industries To Learn From Each Other At Houston’s SpaceCom Conference

SpaceCom, at the George R. Brown Convention Center, is the largest commercial space conference in the world.
Last year’s inaugural event drew 1,700 attendees from 32 countries, and more are expected this time around.

Steven Gonzalez, associate manager at the Johnson Space Center’s Strategic Opportunities & Partnership Development Office, is one of the organizers.
He said the goal is to connect both NASA and commercial aerospace companies with terrestrial industries.

Those terrestrial industries are advanced manufacturing, agribusiness, energy, maritime and medical.

He said Houston is well-positioned to continue to be a leader in space exploration – with not just NASA’s Johnson Space Center but also a future spaceport at Ellington Field and the potential of attracting many more commercial space companies.

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/a...om-conference/

[Jack Lance]

TMC just keeps getting deeper into biopharmaceuticals. That's economic diversity.

HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ruga Corporation today announced the company’s name change to Aravive Biologics, Inc., and the relocation of its business operations to Houston, Texas. The move follows the company’s award of a $20 million grant from the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), which is supporting the development of a novel drug candidate, Aravive-S6, as a potential treatment for acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) and solid tumors including ovarian, pancreatic, and breast cancers.

We are very pleased to be selected to receive this significant funding from CPRIT and look forward to building our business in Houston’s Texas Medical Center,” said Ray Tabibiazar, M.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Aravive Biologics. “Houston’s vibrant biomedical community is home to many of the top cancer researchers in the United States, including noted experts on AML, our lead hematologic cancer indication. We look forward to accessing this outstanding expertise and growing our presence within the local biomedical community as we advance Aravive-S6 into clinical trials.”

About Aravive Biologics, Inc.
Aravive Biologics is a privately held, late pre-clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel, highly selective cancer therapies that treat serious malignancies while sparing normal healthy cells. The company’s lead program is focused on the GAS6/AXL pathway, where activation appears to play a critical role in multiple types of cancer malignancies by promoting tumor metastasis and cell survival. Aravive Biologics has generated strong preclinical data for its lead drug candidate, Aravive-S6, in both acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and solid tumors including ovarian, pancreatic, and breast cancers. The company is based in Houston, Texas, and receives support from the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas. For more information, please visit our website at www.aravive.com.

Ruga Corporation Announces Move to Houston with $20 Million Grant from CPRIT and Name Change to Aravive Biologics | Business Wire

[Jack Lance]

Protecting intellectual property rights in energy and Tech = economic diversity.

The Houston law firm Baker Botts, best known for its energy practice, has built one of the nation's largest and most successful intellectual property practices, opening offices in tech hot spots and developing an unusual compensation system to attract and keep talented lawyers.

The firm began developing the business in 1990 by hiring a dozen lawyers who specialized in patent law. A quarter century later, Baker Botts has about 180 attorneys working in intellectual property, representing clients such as AT&T, Samsung, Facebook, Hitachi and Cisco Systems.

The noted energy firm, which has 700 lawyers, today has offices in Silicon Valley, New York and Austin, with revenue from technology practice equalling that of its energy practice. "Of our top 10 clients, six are technology companies," says Baker Botts partner Bart Showalter, chair of the firm's intellectual property practice.

Baker Botts puts energy into intellectual property - Houston Chronicle