Florida Gulf Coast University ranked Gainesville 22nd out of 22 metropolitan statistical areas in Florida, for industrial diversity. FGCU calculated the ranking based on data from the Bureau of Labor statistics to compile its industry diversity index.
Lower industrial diversity is typical of college towns, like Gainesville, because a lot of people are employed by the state, says Carolyn Johnson, director of business, economic development and innovation policy for the Florida Chamber of Commerce.
While Johnson says this ranking is not necessarily negative, industrially diverse regions tend to withstand recessions or economic downturns better than those that are not. “We are always trying to diversify Florida’s economy, because when there is a downturn, we don’t suffer as much,” he explained.
What is the answer to increasing industrial diversity in the Gainesville area? Manufacturing.
Manufacturing is one of Florida’s fastest growing economies, Johnson said. It is growing at a rate of 11-thousand jobs per year, she said.
Manufacturing creates additional jobs from overlap with several industries, such as the automotive and biotechnology fields. It attracts trade, distributors, high skilled labor and pays higher wages, Johnson said.
Biotechnology has a clear footprint in the city’s manufacturing portfolio. RTI Surgical, Exactech and Endoscopy Replacement Parts manufacture prosthetics for medical orthopedicand surgical operations across varying spectra. In Alachua, Nanotherapeutics manufactures biopharmaceutical products, such as vaccinations, and medical devices.
Exactech alone employs about 500 workers in Gainesville, says Priscilla Bennet, Exactech’s vice president of marketing and communications.
The company’s history proves the magnitude at which a manufacturing business can grow. Exactech grew from just an idea to a robust business providing high quality orthopedic parts, from founders, Bill Petty, orthopedic surgeon, M.D; his wife, Betty, and biomedical engineer Gary Miller, PhD., in 1985. It now distributes products to hospitals in over 35 countries.
“While a lot of companies are trying to outsource jobs, we aspire to have about 80 percent of our manufacturing done in house,” Bennet said.
A few other local manufacturing plants assemble products with a more uncommon niche. Phalanx manufactures police armor and Prioria produces unmanned aircraft systems, some of which can be used for military operations.
Other companies manufacture home and construction products. For instance, Goodwin Heartpine and Jackson Stoneworks manufacture aesthetic home products, such as flooring and countertops.
While neighborhood manufacturing plants create diverse terrain in the Gainesville business world, it could be more diverse if local governments take the right steps to welcome new industry, Johnson said. Last year, the Florida Chamber of Commerce led the fight to the Florida Legislature to remove the sales tax on manufacturing equipment, and manufacturing jobs increased 3.4 percent in the state.
Currently, manufacturing jobs make up about 3.5 percent of the Gainesville area workforce, said Susan Davenport, CEO of the Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce. The chamber is using several approaches to increase manufacturing locally.
“One of the great things about manufacturing is that it has a great multiplier effect,” Davenport explained. “For every new job in that sector, we have a spin-off effect where the jobs we’re creating are primary jobs, but other jobs will follow that sector.”
Materials-and-advanced manufacturing is one of the five targets of the Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce’s economic development program, “Transforming Greater Gainesville.” For these targets, the Gainesville Chamber of Commerce sets a collective metric of creating 3,500 new jobs in one of the five sectors, with an added goal of enhancing the capital investment in the area to $250 million, every five years, Davenport said.
“The chamber is working to expand manufacturing by recruiting new corporations and companies that have not been in the Gainesville area”, Davenport said. The chamber is also looking to help startups and other local companies to expand their growth by connecting them with local establishments that could aid in their expansion, such as the University of Florida College of Engineering. The chamber also has an Advanced Manufacturing Council to help promote and grow manufacturing opportunities in the area.
Manufacturing could also help close the income gap in the Gainesville area, Davenport said. “It could help us enhance opportunities from skillsets across the panorama of GEDs to PhDs,” Davenport said. “And it’s something that we’re especially interested in, in regard to helping closing that income disparity in our community.”
JENNIFER JENKINS discovered her love for writing when she drafted her first expository essay on a beautician who botched her haircut in second grade. While she works on her journalism degree at the University of Florida, she interns in the API editorial department. She appreciates the opportunity to highlight local businesses and talent in Gainesville while she works on honing her rhetoric. Ultimately, Jenkins dreams of working in the fashion industry, where a good haircut will be nonnegotiable.