Fayetteville Recruits Swedish Companies

The city of Fayetteville is trying to recruit Swedish businesses to town. The city and the Fayetteville Economic Development Council are contracting with Per-Erik Perrson, an agent for he Swedish-American business South Central LLC, to recruit companies that are looking to expand beyond their country’s borders.

Steve Rust, president and CEO of FEDC, said it’s a target effort to identify companies that line up with the Green Valley network’s priorities of building the city’s business and technology cluster focused on sustainability.

In Yale University’s 2008 Environmental Performance Index, Sweden is ranked as the world’s third most environmentally friendly country.

The country also has a lot of “off-the-shelf” technology, Rust said.

“To bring that kind of technology over here is pretty low risk and will create jobs and capital investment,” he said. “And it’s an ideal time, particularly for European countries to come here, because of the value of the dollar against the Euro.

“The cost of doing business here is probably one half of what it would be in Europe.”

Fayetteville is strategically a good location for Swedish companies to expand or relocate, Rust said, because it’s in the center of the country and business costs are less that those of the east and west coast cites.

Fayetteville is entering the second phase of a six-month contract, at a cost of $26,250, to be split between the city and the economic development council. The first phase, which brought four visiting companies to Fayetteville, was paid for by the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce and the economic development council.

One of those companies, Demolition & Asbestos Removal and Recycling, announced in June its intentions to move to Northwest Arkansas and create 25 new jobs over the next three years.