Manufacturers of industrial machinery find the Rockford Area to be an ideal location, according to a study conducted by Carter & Burgess, a major national site selection company. Several factors came into play, including the city’s highly skilled workforce, the availability of highly specialized existing facilities, and a strong, qualified supplier base.
The region’s central location and close proximity to key transportation assets (airports, road and rail) are an additional benefit. The Rockford Region maintains a much higher concentration of skilled metal-working employees than the national average. In fact, the region has 7.2 times the national average for industrial machinery manufacturing employment and 4.2 times for metals manufacturing and R&D. This is a very compelling reason for metal-working companies of any kind to consider the Rockford Region.
In particular, the machine tools, food-processing equipment, medical equipment, and R&D engineering industries are particularly well suited for this region.
Rockford Region Advantages
- Good labor availability and quality, especially skilled
- Critical mass of engineering talent & educational institutions
- Good access to markets
- Satisfaction with electric power service
- Many potential sites with rail
- Competitive labor costs
- Good training opportunities
- Low-cost existing facilities
- Access to established vendor/supplier network
- Superior transportation system
- Good labor/management relations
- Large amount of regional expansion and location activity
- Foreign Trade Zone benefits
Within the four-county area surrounding Rockford, there are more than 250 machine tool companies. The 12 largest, each with more than 200 employees each, are:
- Carrier Commercial
- Woods Equipment
- SPX
- Estwing Manufacturing
- Ingersoll Machine Tool
- E.D. Etnyre
- Evoqua Water Technologies LLC
- Ingersoll Cutting Tools
- Regal Cutting Tools
- Newell Operating Company
- W.A. Whitney
- Goellner
Industrial Machine Manufacturing Strengths
- Specific strengths in machine tools, food processing equipment, medical equipment, and research and development engineering
- Good labor availability, especially skilled and engineering
- Good labor quality
- Good access to markets
- Many training opportunities
- Regional suppliers
- Good labor/management relations
- Large regional location activity
- Good job and wage impact
