Karen: This is PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook, I’m Karen Love, the host and Founder. Today I’m here with Frances Castneda Dyess and she’s the President of the Houston East End Chamber of Commerce. Welcome to the Playbook Frances.

Frances: Thank you Karen for having me.

Karen: Well, you know, I’m out in the marketplace on a daily basis and I’m seeing so much activity, I am wondering how the manufacturing and distribution is being effective and I think you will have some insight for me.

Frances: Yes, and it has been changing, especially with Houston being one of the fastest growing cities in America. There’s about 1,000 people that are moving into Houston a day and because of that growth manufacturing and retailers are building new manufacturing facilities to service them and to give them new products. For example, Silver Eagle Distributing had opened a new plant in Pasadena; this new manufacturing facility has created new job growth and it’s state of the art so they’re more efficient with what they’re doing. Another example is Goya Foods; last year they opened a new manufacturing/distributing facility, it’s 350,000 square feet and they’ll be able to make 1,000 cans a minute, so it’ll be their manufacturing and distribution center. They have also created new job growth and become more efficient with state of the art programming.

Karen: Fantastic. Well that is extremely interesting and I just find it to be asking more questions about infrastructure so I’m wondering if you’ll come back and help us understand how all the growth is affecting infrastructure in the city?

Frances: I would love to Karen, thank you.

Karen: Wonderful, I look forward to that. So for other port related topics, visit PKFTexas.com/portadvisoryserivces. This has been another Thought Leader production brought to you by PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook.