During the month of October, MVEDA invested considerable time on its target marketing and prospecting efforts. Early in the month MVEDA conducted a prospect visit to Washington, D.C. where we met with several site consultants and companies involved with federal contracting efforts. During the month, MVEDA also attended two trade shows: the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) in Las Cruces which focused on the commercial aerospace industry; and Solar Power International in Anaheim where over 2,000 companies exhibited. At both shows, MVEDA sponsored invitation only events where we had the opportunity to engage and develop relationships with companies within each respective industry. At ISPCS, MVEDA sponsored the conference’s opening reception which received significant attention, and at Solar Power International, MVEDA and Verde Corporate Realty Services co-sponsored an event hosted by the New Mexico Partnership where over 250 company representatives attended. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson also attended this event and spoke to the audience about the continued opportunities for solar energy development and manufacturing in New Mexico.
To date during the current fiscal year, MVEDA has created 36 new leads, representing over 3,190 jobs thereby indicating a very healthy pipeline of future projects. Renewable energy and manufacturing & logistics projects represent the overwhelming greater percentage of our leads.
November marks a critical time period for MVEDA in our prospecting activities. Economic development recruiting efforts normally have a minimum sales cycle of six months. Given that we have only eight months left in our fiscal year, this means that we have only two months left to develop new leads that may have a chance of closing prior to July 2010 when our new fiscal year begins. Therefore, MVEDA will be concentrating significant efforts on getting current leads and prospects to the finish line.
The open projects that MVEDA believes have the greatest likelihood of closing this fiscal year include;
- Project Windtower, an alternative energy manufacturer,
- Project Alimentos, a food processing company, and
- Project Roadrunner and Project X, both alternative energy developers.
If realized, these four projects represent over 200 jobs to Dona Ana County and over $300MM in capital investments.
