Officials with the Iowa Association of Business and Industry piled into a blue-and-green, made-in-Iowa Winnebago RV on October 3rd to start an 11-day jaunt around the state that’s being dubbed the Elevate Iowa Manufacturing Tour.
ABI president Nicole Crain says they’ll be stopping at factories, high schools, community colleges, and city halls to highlight Iowa manufacturers.
“We are so excited to be on the road this week and this next week talking about Iowa manufacturing,” Crain says, “talking about who manufacturers are, what products they make in Iowa, and also raising the awareness of the great careers that there are for Iowa students who are in our communities to stay in Iowa and have a career manufacturing.”
The tour is designed to connect students and educators with Iowa manufacturers, while spotlighting the wide range of high-tech, high-demand career opportunities available in modern manufacturing.
“Manufacturing actually is the number-one contributor to Iowa’s GDP, so more than $43-billion is added to the economy each year because of manufacturing, and that’s billion with the B,” Crain says. “It employs more than 215,000 people in the state of Iowa, so it’s very important to our state’s economy, very important to our communities, both urban cities and rural communities.”
She says the average Iowa manufacturing job pays $80,000 a year, with wages and benefits.
The list of cities on the tour includes: Ames, Ankeny, Cedar Falls, Conrad, Des Moines, Fairfield, Marshalltown, Oskaloosa, Pella and Waterloo.
“A couple of things when we were thinking of the route, we wanted to highlight manufacturers that were doing great things in the state that could really talk about their partnerships with education and manufacturing in the local community,” Crain says. “We also are highlighting the 2025 Coolest Thing Made in Iowa, which is the cotton picker, and then the 2024 Coolest Thing Made in Iowa, which is the ZR5-1200 baler.”
The tour will wrap up October 14th in Altoona in conjunction with the A-B-I’s annual Iowa Manufacturing Conference.
