Another comeback story in Minnesota business is Eden Prairie–based ADC Telecommunications, which also struggled during the high-tech bust. Now a trimmer company focused on infrastructure products for the delivery of high-speed Internet, data, video, and voice services, ADC is profitable again, and it, too, is looking to the international market to fuel its growth.
A key part of ADC’s international strategy is holding down manufacturing costs. To that end, ADC opened a new manufacturing facility in Brno, Czech Republic, where it expects to have as many as 200 people working by year’s end, and as many as 400 within the next two years. According to Mary Quay, ADC’s vice president of global operations, labor rates in Brno are 80 percent lower than those in Berlin, where ADC also has operations, and 50 percent less than at its manufacturing facility in Glenrothes, Scotland, which closed as a result of the new Czech facility. In addition to lower labor expense, labor force availability and lower transportation costs put Brno ahead of other Eastern European locations under consideration during the company’s six-month evaluation process.
The Brno facility will serve ADC customers in its Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region, the second-largest business area for the company next to the Americas. But that could change in a few years, as Quay believes (not surprisingly) that the company’s China operation has the potential to overtake the EMEA region in overall revenue. “We see China as one of our larger growing markets, if not the largest,” she says.
