SAN ANGELO, Texas — An announcement from the San Angelo Chamber of Commerce in the first week of July told West Texans that a German-based company specializing in electronics had relocated its northeast U.S manufacturing facility to the Concho Valley.
Rosenberger Site Solutions, LLC, worked with the City of San Angelo Development Corporation and the chamber's economic development department to establish the San Angelo location at 3862 Tractor Trail.
The facility was previously in Akron, Pennsylvania.
The chamber said Rosenberger is one of the world's leading manufacturers of impedance-controlled and optical connectivity solutions. Specializing in high-frequency, high-voltage and fiber optic technology for mobile communications networks, data centers, test and measurement applications, automotive electronics, as well as high-voltage contact systems, medical electronics and military and aerospace engineering.
So how did the company decide to move halfway across the country from Akron to West Texas?
"Rosenberger is an international manufacturer of all manner of electronics equipment. They're very heavy in the aerospace industry, the automotive industry, the defense sector," Michael Looney, VP of Economic Development at the chamber, said. "We were alerted through several of the systems that we have at the Chamber of Commerce that we look for leads on companies that we understand might be going through a change."
Looney said that change could be an expansion or a relocation, or coming to the US market from overseas. He said about 50 percent of the companies the Chamber is currently working with are overseas companies.
"There's an attraction to the southwest and the Texas market. If Texas was its own nation, or a sovereign nation, it would have the eighth largest economy in the world," Looney said. "It's a marketplace, a distribution area where a lot of companies are coming and are attracted to."
Reshoring - or coming back to manufacture in the United States from overseas - is something he said is a growing trend.
"Rosenberger, we had heard, was looking in the southwest United States market, so we reached out to them. They had a sales office in Lake Charles, Louisiana," Looney said. "We reached out to them and told them we were available. We thought we had some facilities that might be of interest and invited them up."
Rosenberger representatives visited San Angelo several times to explore the market, as well as other markets in Central and West Texas. Looney said the company wanted to be near "the Austin orbit" but not necessarily in Austin proper. Traditionally, Rosenberger tends to be in smaller, tertiary markets where employee retention and training tend to be an easier process, he said.
"A smaller community generally is going to be more loyal to a company. We see that with Ethicon, Johnson & Johnson, 80% of the world's sutures are made in San Angelo, Texas," Looney said. "So Rosenberger was interested in that cultural philosophy. They didn't want to be in a situation where there was too much competition for employees. They didn't want to have a lot of employee turnover."
After all of those factors were taken into account, Rosenberger ultimately decided to move their US operations to San Angelo with a long-term lease on Tractor Trail.
The San Angelo facility is a US manufacturing hub for its site infrastructure solutions state-of-the-art connectivity products such as FTTA/PTTA, low-PIM coax transmission lines, coax jumpers, DAS and transmission line devices, as well as installation material, accessories and tools to ensure best possible long-term equipment operations and reliability.
Currently, the facility is up and running with five employees after about six months of completely redoing the building to meet the company's needs.
The initial group of five is already working with the next group of five in the works. The company said it plans to hire 25 full-time local employees and offer full-training and student technology apprenticeship opportunities for newcomers to the high-frequency electronics industry.
Company leadership is committed to introducing prospective employees to the field of high-frequency electronics manufacturing, with a particular focus on students with an interest in electronics engineering, subassembly and supply chain engineering.
"Mainly, they focus here on components which are known in the industry as 'verticals'. And that is the equipment that is put on 5G towers and other types of high-frequency telecommunications equipment," Looney said.
The company moved a facilities manager from a facility in Hungary to oversee the West Texas operation and match the look of his previous facility.
"We're very pleased with the transaction," Looney said. "Rosenberger has done everything right and it was a very accurate transaction. There wasn't a lot of guesswork and the community and really, the economic development department of the Chamber, in partnership with the City of San Angelo (COSADC)....we worked really well together."
"We did a lot of the footwork for them (Rosenberger) and that helped too. That's something that the Chamber is really good at in San Angelo."
In 2021, state data showed the manufacturing output was $377 million and that was an "off year", with the gross domestic product reported at $8.3 billion for San Angelo. Looney said there are more than 100 manufacturing businesses - large and small - in the Concho Valley, according to the San Angelo Regional Manufacturing Alliance (SARMA) program.