Why New Mexico is a Great Place to Build Your Business
New Mexico offers businesses the tools to grow and prosper.
Plenty of shovel-ready sites and office space, a strategic location and a dedication to providing the talented workforce needed today and tomorrow — it’s all here in New Mexico, and this unique set of advantages is accompanied by a business-friendly environment that adds even more appeal.
As the saying goes, location is everything, and New Mexico’s is prime. The state offers quick access to key consumer markets, nationally and internationally, for manufacturing and logistics/warehousing operations, and rail connects it to two major ports in Los Angeles/Long Beach and Houston/Galveston. And 75% of the U.S. population is reachable by roadway within two days. New Mexico also is an international gateway, sharing a border with Mexico.
Companies Coming
Small wonder that so many companies are growing across the state. BNSF Railway’s site certification program has certified business parks in Clovis, Gallup and Los Lunas as ready for development. Xcel Energy also provides a similar service highlighting development-ready sites across New Mexico.
A network of industrial/rail parks, including Raton Station (rail), Milan Industrial Park, Roswell Air Center and Sandia Science & Technology Park, make doing business in New Mexico easier by connecting mutually beneficial businesses and industries.
The state has scored a number of recent new capital investment and expansion projects. Among them:
- Las Cruces-based telehealth company Electronic Caregiver’s announced its plans to create 770 jobs, with $1 million from the State of New Mexico’s Local Economic Development Act (LEDA) job-creation fund and a pledge from the City of Las Cruces for an additional $235,000.
- Facebook is in the midst of adding two more buildings to its massive data center in Los Lunas, expanding its investment thereby $800 million.
- Nature’s Toolbox, or NTxBio, relocated from Santa Fe to a 25,000-square-foot building at the Enchanted Hills Commerce Center in Rio Rancho, bringing over 100 new jobs with them.
Talent for Tomorrow’s Jobs
Workforce training programs continue to thrive in New Mexico, ensuring that companies here now, as well as those that are coming, can find all the talent they need.
Among them are the Aviation Maintenance Technology program at Eastern New Mexico University–Roswell, which feeds that region’s growing aviation sector, and Central New Mexico Community College’s Ingenuity Inc. and Deep Dive Coding Bootcamps, which offer job training opportunities for residents in rural New Mexico interested in pursuing careers in tech.
In addition, the North American Wind Research and Training Center at Mesalands Community College provides real-world, hands-on training experience to prepare students to conduct troubleshooting, preventative maintenance and repairs on wind turbines.
These and many other industry-tailored programs throughout the state support oil and gas, food production, IT and programming, manufacturing trades, and a wealth of other industries. They are joined by three Tier-1 research universities — the University of New Mexico, New Mexico State University and New Mexico Tech — and major research assets, including Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Air Force Research Laboratory.
Tech Hub
That pipeline of talent will be needed for the state’s growing tech ecosystem. There is a higher concentration of STEM talent in New Mexico than the national average, and new research from Soft ware.org shows that between 2018 and 2020, software jobs grew 18.7% in the state, the fastest in the country.
This means that in addition to major players, New Mexico’s growing tech ecosystem includes a diversity of subsectors, everything from bioscience to AI software development to 3-D printing operations. For instance, Curia, a leading contract research, development and manufacturing organization for the bioscience industry, recently announced plans to add up to 274 more employees to its Albuquerque operations and invest more than $100 million into facility expansion.
Want to know more?
To learn more about New Mexico, check out the latest edition of New Mexico Economic Development.
