Karen: This is the PKF Texas Entrepreneurs’ Playbook. I’m Karen Love, the host and co-founder. Today I am here with Jeff Applegate, president of Blackwell Plastics and the chairman of the Greater Houston Manufacturers Association. Welcome back to the playbook Jeff.
Jeff: Thank you, Karen.
Karen: Fantastic. Now I know with the GHMA that you are at the forefront of a lot of the industry trends. Can you share what some of those are that you’re seeing?
Jeff: Sure. It’s really exciting to see the trends of just a resurgence of the interest of manufacturing in the United States and Houston is the number one manufacturing city in the United States and a number of projects, manufacturing and industrial projects that are going on in Houston is staggering. The port of Houston has $28.9 billion in projects between 2010 and 2015. That’s billions of dollars of projects.
Karen: That’s amazing. That’s with a B. Billion.
Jeff: Yeah. Big big projects. So yeah, they’re – and those are going to create, they’re creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and one of the other trends that we’re seeing is a shortage of middle skill jobs in the area. The energy business is booming and as a result of the energy business booming the machinists, the welders, the pipe fitters, the middle skill jobs are in real short supply so we’re really working t try to address those issues.
Karen: Fantastic. Well I know Houston’s glad to have the Manufacturing Association thinking about those things.
Jeff: Well thank you.
Karen: So thank you for joining us today. I appreciate it.
Jeff: Sure.
Karen: This has been another Thought Leader Production brought to you by PKF Texas Entrepreneurs’ Playbook so tune in next week for another chapter.