Industrial Base

Highly Diversified. Strategically Concentrated.

Epicenter of International Commerce & Logistics

75+ companies operating large distribution facilities

More than $130 billion of the country’s annual GDP

St. Louis regional industrial base is highly diversified but also enjoys strong areas of concentration, including beverages, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, detergents, aerospace, metals, and petroleum products. Major companies with production facilities in the St. Louis region or occupying large blocks of warehouse space include General Motors, Boeing, Anheuser-Busch InBEV, Mallinckrodt, Procter & Gamble, Dial-Henkel, Reckitt-Benckiser, Phillips 66, US Steel, Worldwide Technology, and many more.

The St. Louis region has been a leader in aircraft and auto manufacturing for the past hundred years, and today supports major facilities of Boeing and General Motors and their suppliers. These operations include aircraft manufacturing – which is unique to St. Louis among its peer MSAs – as well as light truck and utility vehicle manufacturing and nonferrous metal foundries. St. Louis has a high concentration of both materials engineers and aerospace engineers with location quotients (LQ) of 1.80 and 1.79 respectively. Location quotients indicate concentrations of occupations with an LQ of over 1 meaning that the region has a higher concentration than the national average. Production and transportation occupations are strong in the region with logisticians having an LQ of 1.28 and other production occupations at 1.29. The transportation, distribution and logistics cluster continues to be one of the region’s highest growth areas supporting e-commerce and the global supply chain through its multimodal capabilities and strategic location in the nation.

A Thriving Industrial Real Estate Market

As of 2022, the region’s total industrial real estate market is over 240 million square feet (MSF) with more than 20 MSF added in the last five years and 5 MSF currently under construction. The building inventory consists of large speculative bulk distribution warehouse facilities ranging from 500,000 square feet to over 1 million square feet, build-to-suit facilities and specialized user-driven facilities. Both the Missouri and Illinois submarkets enjoy large industrial parks with highly accessible infrastructure supported and sponsored by regional and national developers.

On both sides of the Mississippi River, the St. Louis region offers space and resources that fit the needs and wants of major corporations and growing small and medium sized businesses. The region’s diverse real estate sites and infrastructure accommodate a mix of uses, from light industrial, to warehousing, to heavy industrial.

Diversified Pipeline Service

Available pipeline capacity is a major asset for area manufacturers and energy companies such as Boeing, Ameren, BP, Phillips 66 and CenterPoint. The St. Louis region is a major node within the international network of pipelines transporting crude oil, petrochemicals and natural gas from all across the country– ensuring consistency of price and supply. Converging in St. Louis are six interstate natural gas pipelines and nine refined product pipelines.

Phillips 66’s largest U.S. refinery is in Wood River, Illinois, and supplied by multiple pipelines from both Canada and the Gulf of Mexico. Built in 1917, the Wood River Refinery complex currently operates across roughly 2,200 acres of land and employs more than 1,100 employees, including onsite contractors. The refinery produces a high percentage of transportation fuels such as gasoline, diesel and aviation fuels, petrochemical feedstocks, asphalt and coke. Wood River’s finished materials are transported via pipeline, barge & ship, tank truck, and railcar.

 

Crude Capacity

157,000 Barrels Per Day

Total Capacity

166,000 Barrels Per Day

Gasoline Capacity

75,000 Barrels Per Day

Distillate Capacity

55,000 Barrels Per Day

Clean Product Yield Capability

81%

Nelson Complexity Factor

11.8

Source: Phillips 66 Website – Wood River Refinery Profile