Articles
A talent for manufacturing
Alchemy Industrial CEO and co-founder Mush Khan has seen America’s manufacturing doppelganger up close. And like others who source in China, he was impressed. “In the 2012 - 2014 timeframe, I was working for a company that had supply chains in China and spent time there. It was an incredible experience, to see the robustness and the hardworking mindset that Chinese people have. It's a sight to behold.”
But even then, Khan saw change ahead. “I would argue that we’re in a 20 year unfolding of reshoring of key industrial activity back to the United States,” Khan says. “So often we get focused on the news of the day and whatever press release or what's happening in the market. It's very positive for the U.S. – but it’s not easy,” he added.
An understatement for the ages. But today the coin is decidedly two-sided.
“This is an incredible time for manufacturers, a very difficult time, but also an incredible time. As Alchemy has evolved, we’re really focused on the area of battery energy storage products and all the control systems that go with it; we got there as customers led us in that direction,” he says. “I would still say we're very early in this journey and still make mistakes along the way.
“But we now have customers that actually send us money for stuff that we build. Even though it's still early, I think that we're in the right spot as a company. It's an opportunity-rich environment,” Khan says. “I think there's going to be hundreds, maybe thousands of companies, big companies built over the next 10 to 20 years in a number of different market sectors related to manufacturing and industry.”
Khan has been instrumental in ensuring that Houston is at the center of America’s industrial reawakening.
“I was a former board member at the East End Maker Hub, actually TXRX, which is the founding member of the East End Maker Hub. When I first started working with TXRX many, many years ago, they were in a smaller place. you know, real sort of garage band-type of environment. And their leadership saw the need to create a working space for manufacturing companies here in Houston,” he says.
“And so they, along with another organization called UP CDC, formed the East End Maker Hub, which is about a 300,000 square foot space in EDO, East downtown of Houston. What's remarkable about the place is that it's really Houston's historic manufacturing center. When you go back 50, 60 years, that's really where all the manufacturers were. So in a way, it's a journey back in time to create this space,” Khan says. “And today there’s also the intangible benefit of having a community of people that are manufacturing things here, because as you know, quite often you need help.”
Yet despite its historic roots, today the “community” Khan describes has a uniquely modern feel. “I compare it to what happens in Silicon Valley, where, you know, you could probably have coffee somewhere in the Bay Area and run into someone who's building a tech business. Well, same thing in Houston now. You need help every day. I need help every day. And so running into people that are trying to manufacture in their own way is really helpful,” he says.
“The last thing I would say is that Houston has a history of making things. I would argue that no one on the planet knows how to make products and ship them all over the world, like Houston does. We're good at it. We've got the talent to do it. And a lot of the supply chain is here. So now it's a question of rolling up these opportunities (like East End Maker Hub did) to create a new manufacturing environment in Houston.”
There’s no doubting Houston’s manufacturing chops. Greater Houston Partnership ranks manufacturing as the #1 industry in Houston by share of GDP:
Yet in several national rankings of manufacturing “hotspots”, of “leading cities driving growth”, Houston lags even behind some smaller communities. Of course the lens varies, from study to study. Dallas, for one, has rocketed to the top of some real-estate-focused lists, with one citing “9.2 million square feet of manufacturing space delivered in the last five years.”
In part, Houston is short-changed because of the oversized influence of petro-refining – as a customer of Houston’s nation-leading industrial base. Industries driving manufacturing employment growth – and publicity – are today outside traditional oil-and-gas: among them food and beverage, transportation (including aviation and aerospace), and electronics.
All of whom should be looking at Houston as a destination to consolidate onshore production or reshore work. Greater Houston’s capabilities – long utilized by petroleum-refiners – are today its golden calling card. Houston’s industrial base is its secret weapon, to attract hundreds of OEMs who outsourced manufacturing offshore, only to realize, in 2025, that home is where capabilities must meet future demand.
I asked Khan if Houston can retool to meet demand from new industry partners. “I think it's a really good insight. Let me go back to this battery energy storage manufacturing opportunity. So it's a bunch of electronic stuff with wiring, cooling systems or heating systems in some cases in a sheet metal enclosure that's powder coated and all built together and has to be tested.
“Forget that it's a bunch of cells inside this energy storage system. It looks a lot like other panel-related manufacturing that happens in Houston every single day. And so the materials are very similar. The manufacturing and assembly techniques are similar. The QA/QC techniques are similar. And the talent that does that work is also similar. Now you still need to make sure that you can port that panel manufacturing talent, let's say to battery related manufacturing, but you're not talking about a two year journey to train people to do that,” he says.
“I think you could take a really talented person who knows how to make electrical panels, and within a few months time, they're doing a great job building other products”
First, for a city like Houston, that leads the nation in GDP growth among the 20 most-populous metro areas from ‘21-’23, matching manufacturing capabilities with emerging demand is a priority. We know petro-refiners have benefitted from Houston’s industrial talent for decades. It’s high time we’re clear on who else, in other industries, can benefit similarly as companies rush to find new capabilities, onshore.
It’s part of GHMA’s modern mission.
More soon.
Bart Taylor is ED of GHMA. Reach him at [email protected], or 303-888-2832
Manufacturers on the Move: Why ROXBOX Relocated to Houston
Anthony Halsch founded ROXBOX Containers in Denver, Colorado, in 2018, parlaying a career managing the transport of shipping containers in Colorado and Texas to building out the containers as modular, multi-purpose commercial structures.
Halsch attributes the “light bulb” moment to luck – a modest account that downplays his ambition and talent. “I had an abundance of containers and an engineering background and started drawing them. I dusted off my laptop, opened SolidWorks and began designing buildings out of containers. From there I just started hacking them up in a dirt lot, with a mobile welding team that was coming out to our shipping container storage lot to work on other stuff.”
ROXBOX quickly found success – selling finished containers to hospitality businesses – breweries, kitchens, bars restaurants and the like. Today he’s pushed ROXBOX into the industrial space. “We are shifting (more heavily) from shipping containers into more volumetric steel-frame modular, where we're using light gauge steel framing to build out our buildings instead of taking a pre-built box and kind of recreating a building out of it, moving more into a more customized work.”
Houston’s a sales market that certainly fits Halsch’s ambition – but wasn’t the initial reason he moved the company from Colorado to Texas.
“It was definitely something we weren't, you know, really looking to do if we didn't have to. But as the volume of the projects started to grow for us, we began running into staffing issues. The building that we were in wasn't optimal for a modular business. And so we started looking around all over the country – actually starting in Charleston (South Carolina) and all the way to Tampa, Florida, to Alabama, and ultimately, Houston was the winner for us,” says Halsch.
“The biggest factor was that when we came down to Houston, I placed a couple ads just to test the labor market. And we had tons of applicants with a lot of experience. I also started looking at the buildings that were available here and the throughput that we’d be able to achieve; what was available in Houston were so much greater than what we had available to us in Denver, especially at the cost we were looking for,” explained Halsch. “We basically have almost the same exact monthly cost in Houston as we did in Denver, but now have bridge cranes and are on about three and a half acres. And, as you know, the building’s almost 50 feet tall. So we're able to stack modules with our crane inside the building where we didn't have a single crane in Denver.”
I asked Halsch if the move to Houston has met expectations.
“You know, it's been great – even better than what I had anticipated. Moving to a 40,000 square foot facility in a couple of weeks was a pretty drastic decision,” he laughs, “but ended up being very positive for us. The environment we have down here to do business is really solid. And not only that, but one thing that I wasn't expecting was that by having a Houston location, we started to get a ton of inquiries from Texas. We were advertising in Texas when we were in Colorado, but weren’t really getting any business here. I think Texans like to buy from a Texas company,” Halsch says.
My experience tells me this is true everywhere – companies like to do business with their neighbors. But as we manufacture more in the US, companies will be forced to expand their gaze to neighboring cities and states to find what they need. This, I suggested to Halsch, is why so many OEMs, brands, and manufacturers will find Houston to be such an attractive location. Greater Houston’s manufacturing assets are becoming a magnet for a new wave of US production.
Halsch agreed. “I tell a story often when I'm talking to certain clients, that if we can't do something, I can close my eyes and hit a golf ball in the neighborhood that we're in, and I can find somebody that can do it,” he says.
So what’s ahead for ROXBOX?
“I mean, one of the big things that I don't feel like we've tapped into fully yet is the industrial opportunities for us, in Houston. We build all sorts of things out of different elements of steel, and there's a lot of applications where containers and steel skid-based structures are necessary in this economy. And that is certainly one area that I would love to expand into more and really start leveraging some of our experience, to jump into more oil and gas projects,” he offers. “And in just the energy sector as a whole, battery energy storage systems, different types of renewables projects that need some sort of a vessel or structure for storage or multi-use; we can handle all that – and more. We have a very creative team and quality is our number one value here.”
An attribute that sells well – in any market, and any industry.
Contact Anthony Halsch to engage ROXBOX and his team at [email protected] or view the company’s incredible gallery of projects at https://www.roxboxcontainers.com/.
JOIN the GHMA to have your company highlighted – or be the subject of an extended expose as we shine a light on Houston manufacturing.
Bart Taylor, GHMA - [email protected]
