What if your customer base was already there before you signed a lease? In Lenawee County, that’s not a hypothetical. An expert study into the region mapped exactly where local manufacturers are spending money outside the county. The number came back at $369 million annually.
Machine shops in other counties. Steel mills in other states. Plastics processors, chemical suppliers, packaging companies. They’re all serving customers who would buy local if a local option existed. For suppliers and industrial companies evaluating site selection in Michigan, this is the map.
Every dollar of that $369 million is a recurring purchase from an established manufacturer who already operates here and already needs what you make.
Where the Money Is Going
That expert study into the region used an input-output model to track exactly where Lenawee County manufacturers are spending money outside the county. The findings are specific:
Iron and steel mills represent $94.6 million in annual imported purchases — with zero local presence. All Other Basic Organic Chemical Manufacturing accounts for another $41.5 million, half of which leaves the county. Paperboard Mills: $23.1 million, entirely imported. Secondary Smelting and Alloying of Aluminum: $20.8 million, entirely imported. Machine shops: $19.6 million leaving the county despite seven local machine shops already operating here.
The list continues: $16.8 million in plastics material and resin purchases going elsewhere, $15.2 million in inorganic chemicals, $10 million in warehousing and storage, $7.6 million in bolts and fasteners, $7.5 million in corrugated and fiber box manufacturing.
Many of these sectors have zero local presence. No businesses, no employees. The demand exists entirely through imported purchases. A supplier entering any of these categories in the Adrian-Tecumseh SmartZone isn’t competing for existing local market share. They’re quickly capturing spending that currently has no local option.
The Machine Shop Problem and What It Tells You
Machine shops are the clearest illustration of how this dynamic works. Lenawee County already has seven machine shop operations employing hundreds of people, with average earnings of $61,024 per job. Local presence exists. And yet 89% of machine shop purchases still leave the county.
That gap is a capacity problem. Local demand has grown faster than local supply. A new or expanding machine shop locating in our SmartZone doesn’t need to find customers or build a market from scratch. The customer base is already here, already buying, already sending that money somewhere else every month.
The same pattern repeats across plastics material and resin manufacturing, where $47 million in total annual purchases support a local sector, but 36% of that still flows out of the region.
In corrugated and fiber box manufacturing, local production captures 30% of demand while 70% goes elsewhere. The local anchor is there. The capacity to serve it fully isn’t.
Who’s Doing the Buying
The manufacturers generating this supply chain demand aren’t small operations. Kirchhoff Automotive, Wacker Chemical Corporation, Plastic Omnium, L&W Engineering, Inteva Products, and Adrian Steel each rank high among the region’s biggest employers, collectively representing thousands of jobs in Lenawee County.
These are companies with ongoing, recurring purchase needs — not one-off project work. Each of these manufacturers depends on a steady flow of materials, components, and services delivered consistently and on schedule. A supplier who locates nearby and can meet that consistency can win a contract relationship that compounds over years.
Lenawee County’s location quotients tell the same story from a different angle. Nonmetallic mineral product manufacturing has a location quotient of 6.67, meaning the county has 6.67 times the national concentration of that industry. Chemical manufacturing sits at 5.74. Animal production and aquaculture at 5.03. Transportation equipment manufacturing at 3.61. Buying activity in these sectors is real, documented, and underserved.
Geography Does the Work for You
Proximity isn’t just about relationship convenience. For industrial supply chains, it directly affects your customer’s unit economics. Shorter lead times mean lower inventory carrying costs. Local sourcing reduces freight expense. Faster response to quality issues protects production schedules. These are line items on your customer’s P&L, and a supplier who eliminates them wins on cost before the first price negotiation starts.
Adrian and Tecumseh sit in the center of the Detroit–Toledo–Ann Arbor triangle, with each metro market under 60 minutes away. US-223 and M-50 provide direct connections to I-94, I-75, and US-23.
A supplier operating in the SmartZone is within an hour of the entire southeast Michigan and northwest Ohio manufacturing base. The regional supply chain opportunity is considerably larger than the county-level data alone suggests.
That geographic position is why the shift share analysis of the three counties directly east of Lenawee County — Monroe, Wayne, and Lucas — shows General Warehousing and Storage added 8,942 jobs between 2015 and 2020, more than 6,200 jobs above expectations. The logistics and supply chain ecosystem surrounding the SmartZone is already expanding rapidly. Suppliers locating here aren’t entering a static market.
The Workforce to Staff These Operations Already Exists
The skilled trades needed to run supply chain and industrial operations are concentrated here in the area. Industrial truck and tractor operators were the single fastest-growing occupation in the county between 2015 and 2020, followed by packaging and filling machine operators, chemical equipment operators and tenders, and industrial machinery mechanics.
Fabricated metal product manufacturing — the sector most directly relevant to machine shops, stamping, and metal processing — already pays the highest weekly wages in the county at $1,614, with 14.67% wage growth over four years. These are positions that attract and retain workers for the long term.
The education pipeline is building toward the same occupations. The Lenawee Intermediate School District TECH Center runs 24 Career Technical Education programs across 11 school districts under the Michigan Career Pathways initiative. The Align Center for Workforce Development extends that pipeline by building customized training programs tied directly to employer hiring needs.
What Michigan Industrial Site Selection Looks Like Here
Getting to first production run faster and cheaper is the operational argument for the SmartZone, independent of the supply chain opportunity. The incentives available through the LDFA designation give suppliers tools that aren’t available at sites outside the SmartZone footprint.
Industrial Property Tax Abatement under PA 198 reduces property taxes on new investment for up to 12 years. Personal Property Tax Relief under PA 328 abates personal property taxes in select communities and county seats, and Adrian qualifies. The City of Adrian sits in a federally designated Opportunity Zone, offering capital gains tax incentives available for eligible investments. The LDFA itself can apply for grants, construct property, administer revolving loan fund programs, and use tax increment financing — tools that directly reduce the capital requirement for a new supplier operation getting established.
For energy-intensive supply chain operations, like metal processing, chemical manufacturing, plastics production, the Consumers Energy substation serving SmartZone sites provides between 1.35 MW and 15.1 MW of available capacity at 99.998% predicted reliability. Infrastructure that exists today, not infrastructure you’ll need to negotiate and build from scratch somewhere else.
The Market Is Already There
Most site selection conversations start with “where is my customer base?” In Lenawee County, that question has a documented answer: Kirchhoff Automotive, Wacker Chemical, Plastic Omnium, L&W Engineering, Inteva Products, Adrian Steel, and dozens of other manufacturers collectively spending $369 million annually on goods and services that don’t yet have a local supplier.
You don’t need to build the demand. You need to be closer to it than whoever is currently serving it from two states away. The ready-to-build sites in the SmartZone put you in position to do exactly that, with pad-ready infrastructure that compresses the timeline from site selection to first shipment.
Contact the Adrian-Tecumseh SmartZone to discuss site availability, incentive packages, and how the region’s existing manufacturing base can support your growth.
