New Business Announcements: Q1 2025
These announcements include companies that plan to establish, relocate, or expanded existing operations in the region.
To qualify as a “new business announcement,” the project must disclose at least one of the following: jobs created, capital investment, and/or footage of office or industrial space leased. Only a small fraction of the announcements disclose more than one of these values, however. As a result, the Partnership’s analysis of capital investment, employment, and square footage represents a low-ball estimate for new business activity. Of the 142 announcements, 10 provided employment, 12 provided numbers on their capital investment, and 120 provided information on space occupied. Totals came out to 3,429 jobs, $2.7 billion, and 15.4 million square feet.
CATEGORY
The bulk of activity involved the expansion of existing Houston-area operations, which totaled 104 projects in Q1 2025, a 7 percent increase over the 97 announced during Q1 2024. These are companies that already have establishments in the Houston area and have either expanded their real estate footprint in the area or added a significant number of new jobs.
A total of 38 businesses established new facilities in the Houston area in Q1 2025, a 5 percent decrease from 40 companies new to the region during Q1 2024.
YEAR-OVER-YEAR
Q1 2025 logged 142 announcements, a 2.2 percent increase over Q1 2024 when 139 projects were announced. Though the percentage of total projects has not significantly increased year over year, the amount of jobs created, capital investment, and square footage is almost double that of Q1 2024.
Q1 2025 New Business Announcements Summary:
- 142 announced projects
- 10 projects estimated 3,429 new jobs
- 12 projects estimated $2.7 billion in capital expenditures
- 120 projects estimated 15.4 million in commercial square footage
Q1 2024 New Business Announcements Summary:
- 139 announced projects
- 13 projects estimated 1,725 new jobs
- 9 projects estimated $304.5 million in capital expenditures
- 133 projects estimated 7.7 million in commercial square footage
FACILITY TYPE
The project announcements during Q1 2025 fall into six categories: data centers, distribution warehouse, headquarters, manufacturing, office, and research and development. Not all projects announced a specific type of facility.
INDUSTRY
A third (34 percent) of the announcements in Q1 2025 involve companies engaged in manufacturing. This includes various industries from clean chemical manufacturing to electronics manufacturing. Notable companies include Again, Foxconn, and Schneider Electric.
Professional, scientific, and technical Services, ranked second, and accounts for 20 percent of all announcements. This sector primarily comprises companies specializing in technical consulting, engineering, and scientific research & development. Notable companies in this sector that made announcements include Special Cargo and United Therapeutics Corp.
PARTNERSHIP WINS
The Partnership played a key role in 7 of the new business announcements during Q1 2025. The Partnership’s support included services such as potential site selection, possible incentives for establishing a facility in the area, and market research. These Partnership supported projects collectively generated more than 1,299 new jobs, attracted more than $2.2 billion in capital investment, and represented three U.S.-based companies and four international companies. These wins contribute to an economic impact of $7.2 billion and 4,192 indirect jobs.
Details on selected Partnership projects:
- Again is a Denmark-based carbon capture & clean chemical manufacturing company.
- Bergstrom Inc. is an Illinois-based company that aims to re-shore its manufacturing facility for sheet metal components.
- CKS Packaging Inc. is a rigid plastics packaging manufacturing company seeking to expand US operations.
- Foxconn Corp. is based in Taiwan and manufactures electronics for companies such as Apple. They are expanding production lines in North Houston to build an AI server.
- Summit Next Generation, an Iowa-based company, is partnering with Honeywell on a new sustainable aviation fuel project on the Gulf Coast.
- United Imaging is a Chinese medical device company looking to expand their Houston facility.
- Vestas Technology R&D Americas, Inc. is a Denmark-based, global wind energy company looking to relocate its U.S. headquarters from Oregon.
Methodology
The Partnership Methodology compiles information from a variety of sources for our New Business Announcements (NBAs) database. Methods include, but are not limited to, scraping news articles, monitoring Google alerts, and tapping into several databases, such as CoStar. We also include Partnership-assisted projects from our Economic Development Division. Generally, NBAs are projects that meet the qualifying criteria for new and/or expanded corporate real estate facilities, such as having new construction or renovation and meeting one or more of the following criteria: creating 20 or more new jobs, having 5,000 or more square footage, or having an investment of $1 million or more. Retail, educational, government, and other non-commercial facilities do not qualify, but projects creating a headquarters, data center, distribution warehouse, call center, or research and development facility will count.
Prepared by Greater Houston Partnership Research
Margaret Barrientos
Research Analyst
mbarrientos@houston.org
