With an economy that stretches across oceans and continents, Texas is a leader in attracting direct investment by foreign companies and exporting products around the world. Both forms of business activity create jobs and opportunity in the Lone Star State.

“I’m bringing back American dollars from Vietnam and Cambodia. A lot of my sales are in Asia,” says A.J. Wichita, founder and CEO of Richardson-based Nitro 9 Products, which exports to 16 countries and is about to add more.

Global Marketplace

Using Texas-produced petroleum products, the company develops lubricants and fuel additive products. New target markets include Nigeria, Ghana and the Philippines.

Nitro 9 is also developing products for the British market. The company, which employs 20 people in Texas, is working on a product that would reduce coal emissions in China, a potentially huge market, says Wichita.

Nitro 9 isn’t alone. For nine consecutive years, Texas has been ranked as the top state for exporting. Exports in 2010 amounted to $206.64 billion, up almost 27 percent from 2009. Texas outpaced growth in overall U.S. exports during that period, which grew by about 21 percent.

John Clay, president of Ansr Audio in Powderly, is determined to make that number bigger. The maker of high-quality earphones and audio equipment is taking his latest invention to the world. The five-person company exports to England, Sweden, Oman and South Africa and is seeking new markets.

"There’s a big world out there,” he says of the potential market for his new headset with a built-in transmitter, which should appeal to active wearers in the health club industry.

"The world’s largest fitness center is in Europe. And I’d like to get into Russia,” says Clay.

Millions of people have seen his products, but they might not know it.

"SeaWorld, where the guy rides on the back of the killer whale and talks to the audience. He’s using my stuff,” says Clay.

Exporting Success

Another Texas company, Houston-based Swiff-Train Company/EarthWerks, was named a 2011 Exporter of the Year by ThinkGlobal Inc., publisher of Commercial News USA, the official export promotion magazine of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The company sells EarthWerks luxury vinyl tile, vinyl plank and hardwood flooring across the United States as well as to customers in more than 40 countries. The company’s warehouse in Belgium supports the European market.

"Our father, who was originally a global trader of steel and wire products, told my brothers L.A., Jeff and me that if we ever wanted to grow our business, we needed to look outside the box and outside our borders,” says Kenny Train, executive vice president of sales and marketing. “As the world becomes more and more global in business, we at Swiff-Train are making the investment and working hard to be a part of it.”

As Texas companies seek overseas markets, foreign companies are investing in Texas. The state ranked first in the nation in foreign direct investment (FDI), a report by consulting firm FDI Intelligence concluded.

FDI Means Jobs

Tianjin Pipe is building a 1.6 million-square-foot plant in the Coastal Texas. The $1-billion facility near Corpus Christi will be the largest new manufacturing investment that a Chinese company has ever made in the United States. The company cited a number of factors in its decision, including strategic geographic location, convenient access to the Port of Corpus Christi for incoming raw materials and outgoing products, and availability of power and other utilities, and a work-ready labor force.

Many of the world’s best-known companies do business in Texas, including Toyota Motor Manufacturing, based in Japan, Sweden-based IKEA, UK-headquartered BP, South Korea’s Samsung, the Netherlands’ Royal Dutch Shell Group and Germany’s BASF.

Toyota has invested more than $1.4 billion in its San Antonio plant, which employs more than 2,800 people, including 1,000 recently hired with the addition of the Tacoma truck line. Samsung is undertaking a $3.6 billion expansion of its Austin semiconductor works, its only semiconductor plant outside Korea. And Jyoti Americas will create a state-of-the-art U.S. manufacturing facility for high voltage transmission lines in Conroe, near Houston. This investment will create 157 jobs and generate an estimated $34 million in capital investment. 

At latest count by the Organization for International Investment, 418,500 Texans were employed by foreign-owned companies in 2008. Foreign direct investment accounted for 4.75 percent of the state’s private-industry jobs.

Nitro 9’s Wichita says Texas is an attractive place for any company to do business.

"The state of Texas is blessed with a lot of opportunity,” he says.