A Manufacturing Powerhouse

PUBLISHED AUGUST 2025

Forget the Rust Belt narrative. Missouri is quietly dominating as a 21st-century manufacturing juggernaut, where legacy titans and agile startups leverage cutting-edge tech, strategic logistics, and a skilled workforce to build everything from fighter jets to F-150 Lightnings. This isn’t your grandfather’s factory floor.

Start with some of the truly heavy hitters—global titans that anchor the ecosystem for advanced manufacturing.

In that space, Boeing Defense, Space & Security in St. Louis is the undisputed aerospace kingpin. More than 16,000 workers engineer and assemble the F/A-18 Super Hornet, F-15EX, and next-gen T-7A Red Hawk trainer jet. Its St. Louis complex is a nerve center for military aviation R&D, pumping out critical ex-ports and anchoring the region’s advanced manufacturing credibility.

Not far away in suburban Wentzville, General Motors has made a $1.5 billion investment to supercharge a manufacturing titan in St. Charles County. Churning out vital full-size vans, it employs roughly 4,000 Missourians who have built more than 2.5 million vehicles since 1995—a testament to the state’s auto muscle.

Flip to the other side of the state, where Ford Motor Co.’s Claycomo Assembly Plant is riding the EV wave. Ford’s plant is pivotal in electrifying America’s favorite truck, the F-150 Lightning. That line is part of a massive $4 billion-plus investment the company has poured into Missouri since 2010, underscoring the state’s strategic role in the industry’s future.

In consumer products, global brands Anheuser-Busch and Procter & Gamble in St. Louis deploy sophisticated automation for global beverage exports and high-volume, sustainable production of everyday essentials.

A common thread running through all of them: the explosion in technology that is driving advanced manufacturing. That, however, is a good news/bad news dynamic: The more things advance in the process of manufacturing, the more resources must be poured into workforce training to operate those complex systems.

The blue-collar manufacturing job of old is, in simple terms, going away.

“The No. 1 problem manufacturers are having now is—even though big companies are  spending a lot in development of technologies and adopting those—suppliers to the big OEMs are slow to adopt that new technology,” says Richard Billo, who runs the Kummer Center for Advanced Manufacturing at the University of Missouri-Rolla. At the state level, he says, “incentive programs to encourage the suppliers to adopt the tech would go a long way.”

It’s difficult, Billo says, for smaller companies to have the liquidity and capital to work with university-level researchers. “We hope to make inroads with the state to provide funding that will allow us to go in and provide technical assistance to Missouri manufacturers,” he says. “But it’s needed: This is the No. 1 industry in the state. Aerospace is the No. 1 subsector, but No. 1 based on employment overall is manufacturing. It’s imperative we find a way to help manufacturers in the state adopt new technologies.”

Innovation Central

Missouri’s tech-forward engine encompasses energy, automation and materials. But it’s not just assembling things—companies in this state are innovating at the core:

Take Clarios and EaglePicher Technologies, two companies with widely diverse missions. Clarios, based in St. Joseph, is powering the future by developing advanced energy storage for renewables and EVs statewide. In Joplin, EaglePicher crafts mission-critical batteries for aerospace and defense, products that demand extreme precision.

Emerson Electric in St. Louis is a Fortune 500 industrial automation leader that is driving the digital factory revolution. Its robotics and smart systems are foundational to modern manufacturing efficiency globally.

At Butler Manufacturing in Kansas City and Hagerty Steel in Bridgeton, industrial strength meets high-tech. Butler handles massive contract fabrication, employing thousands. Hagerty specializes in precision CNC machining and advanced metalwork, feeding aerospace and auto supply chains.

Startups are jumping into that innovation pool, as well, reshaping the factory floor. Beyond the giants, a vibrant startup scene injects disruptive tech at places like Mingo Smart Factory in St. Louis, using AI-powered software to give manufacturers real-time production intelligence, optimizing efficiency and slashing downtime.

Or look at SAYeTECH, leveraging advances in the Internet of Things and 3D printing to transform the agriculture machinery, solving global challenges from small-holder farms to U.S. producers.

In Columbia, EquipmentShare is a construction-tech unicorn—its valuation has soared to $3.5 billion in the decade since its founding—that uses IoT to revolutionize equipment tracking and utilization. Using its tech platform to provide construction-equipment rentals, it now has nearly 5,000 employees nationwide and most recently expanded with a $46 million plant in Moberly.

Economic Muscle: By the Numbers

The impact of this and many others is undeniable:

• $19 billion: Annual manufactured goods exports from Missouri.

• The state has nearly 300,000 manufacturing workers—8 percent of private-sector employment—including 114,000 of them in St. Louis alone.

• More than $25 million invested in the St. Louis Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Center, a catalyst for R&D.

Missouri’s manufacturing sector isn’t resting. Since the end of 2022, projects have dotted the Show-Me landscape, from the new $120 million production facility for IKO Granules in tiny Bismarck to smaller firms like OpenStore Fulfillment in Kansas City, where a $5 million center leverages the region’s burgeoning logistics talent pool and added more than 45 jobs to it.

In the far southeast setting of New Madrid, Beck’s Soybean has pumped $10 million into a new processing plant coming online in 2026 and tapping into agri-tech demand.

This is a trend that doesn’t exclude smaller concerns. In Glasgow, CAM Construction has a new $925,000 cabinet facility where 30 additional workers are turning out advanced millwork. In the digital space, companies like Noviqu in Moberly are adopting AI for safety and maintenance, mirroring a national trend where 55 percent of manufacturers now use generative AI.

And established players like Chemtron RiverBend and Synbiotics in Kansas City thrive, while firms tackle workforce challenges through upskilling and automation amid national labor shortages. Improved supply chains provide tailwinds.

The Outlook: Built for the Future

With more than $136 million in recent projects announced in the first half of 2025 alone—spanning clean tech, agri-tech, e-commerce logistics and more—Missouri’s advanced manufacturing base is firing on all cylinders. Federal incentives like the Inflation Reduction Act offer further growth potential in clean energy manufacturing, solidifying the state’s position as a strategic, tech-savvy, and highly competitive hub where American industry is being reinvented.

Missouri isn’t just making things; it’s making the future—with advanced tech, deep expertise and Midwestern grit.