By Lynn Stevens | Business Review Western Michigan

Logistics is a tough business, and the past few years have been really hard on warehouses and trucking companies. But those who survived the economic winter are seeing their customer bases grow.
CMS, a combined trucking, warehousing and records management company based in Three Rivers, recently added a 62,000-square-foot warehouse in Portage to its facilities in Sturgis, Three Rivers and Centreville.
 "It's a good move for us at this time, because we're in the growth mode, and the owner, Jamie Clark, saw this as an opportunity to help us grow in the Portage area," said Eddie Beard, who heads logistics for CMS. 
Several customers had told the company it would be more convenient if CMS had a Kalamazoo County location, he noted. 
The new site is on the east side of the Kalamazoo-Battle Creek International Airport, just down Sprinkle Road from Midlink Business Park. Its square footage is divided between two buildings, one 10,000 square feet and the other 52,000 square feet, that can be divided and finished at the customer's request, Beard said. The gated lot has room for 20 to 30 semitrailers.  "We will be able to do cross-docking and material handling," Beard said. "Also inventory control, cycle counting."
That's basic warehousing, he said. Lower pricing is one of the company's selling points. Others include the related heavy equipment repair business complete with a mobile repair truck and the document storage and record retention/destruction subsidiary, he said. Midlink, with two buildings and 1.6 million square feet of space, is in a growth mode, too, President David Smith said. It includes warehousing and distribution space, but also houses manufacturers -- and not just light assembly.
Three new tenants all are manufacturers of recycled products, and Smith said it is appropriate for a recycled General Motors Corp. stamping plant to host recycling businesses. W. Soule & Co. some months ago took 68,000 square feet for its new renewable energy production unit employing almost 50, Smith said. Polymer Solutions Inc. is putting discarded plastics through its proprietary processes to make raw material for plastics manufacturers and occupying 104,000 square feet. 
Another new tenant, Tourney Consulting, built what Smith called one of the most complete concrete analytic labs in the nation in 20,000 square feet at Midlink. It performs all kinds of finite analysis on concrete for private-sector companies and public entities such as the U.S. Navy and municipal governments, he said.
"Then we've finished up our deal with Kaiser," Smith said. "Kaiser (Aluminum) is very similar to PSI in the sense PSI is taking plastic and recycling it -- Kaiser is recycling aluminum." Midlink also has three large distributors as tenants: Erickson Flooring & Supply, a  regional hardwood flooring distributor; Kenco Group, third-party logistics provider for Stryker Corp. [NYSE: SYK]; and International Component Strategies, an auto parts distributor. Kalamazoo is far enough south in the state that an analysis performed a few years ago suggested it was an ideal distribution center, Smith noted. The experts who conducted the analysis were surprised to find that, compared to Indianapolis,  Columbus, Ohio, and Louisville, Ky., Kalamazoo was the most cost-effective place from which to distribute, he said. The high price of diesel fuel is heightening that benefit, Smith added.