Raleigh June 2022 Key Take Aways
- Tom White of NC State University said Plant Pathways, an NC State Horticulture Dept. spinout, will announce 15 new jobs in stevia development in Lee County today; Bharat Forge in Lee County wants to hire 300 more people. Sec of State Elaine Marshall needs 500K – 100K sf of temporary warehouse space near Raleigh to store medical equipment and supplies for Ukraine and Moldova for 60-90 days. Tom asked group how we package New Bern’s assets as node of activity with CSX connector and military labor to get offshore wind manufacturing here.
- Greg Tadd is a VP at Whiting-Turner in Raleigh. Projects are in pre-construction longer due to budget constraints and supply chain. National escalation in 2021 was 9%, but 16% in the SE. Interest rates may cause some construction to slow, relieving supply chain stress.
- Avi Grewal, SINGH Development, is seeing 20% price increases on projects, but lenders are working with him. Avi’s team is engaging big trades earlier to work through VE. Morrisville is receptive to cost increases because seeing it firsthand. Multi-family competition is intense.
- Kevin Scanlon, Lee-Moore Capital Company, is re-entering pricing process on garden-style apartments. Closed with Lowes Foods at Northwood Landing across from MOSAIC in Pittsboro; MOSAIC started a Friday Night Concert + Movie event series on Thursday, June 2. Finished construction of stage and activating the space. VinFast should close this summer; there’s good activity on TIP West.
- John Haley is working as a LMCC summer intern. He’s in the Kenan-Flagler RE MBA program and is a graduate of Elon University. He has background in politics and beverage industry.
- Investors Title Company’s Tracy Weekman reported the firm’s Commercial Services Division hired 3 new employees. 1031 and reverse exchanges are active. She is doing industry and hotel deals, construction loans on new hotels and refinances to buy additional land to build hotels.
- Guest Speaker NC State’s Rob Handfield has been a professor of Supply Chain Management for 35 years. He worked with the Joint Acquisition Taskforce to address shortages in healthcare, like PPE, drugs, ventilators, etc. He wrote Flow: How the Best Supply Chains Thrive.
- Handfield said the US was unprepared to deal with pandemic: we outsourced so much offshore that we designed a fragile supply chain. He predicts not seeing relief in 2022 – 2023 and may see improvement by 2024 as organizations redesign supply chains.
- Supply chain issues were kicked off due to COVID, but also due to energy disruptions, labor storages, lack of capital investment, misaligned transportation resources, and surges in consumer demand, which led to massive product shortages and bottlenecks in US, Chinese ports due pandemic shutdowns.
- Disconnect in the ability of free market prices to adjust are driving inflation today, causing continued shortages.
- Handfield sees a shift to near shoring starting to occur. Port of Wilmington wants to increase capacity there; they invested in digital port operating system, with NC State helping with analytics. Labor costs in Mexico less than China, which may be an option.
Recent Comments