Footprint stays in Gilbert with expansion and relocation

Footprint, a sustainability-focused company, is relocating its headquarters to a new spot in Gilbert in response to its growth.

“Footprint is a technology company and we design, develop, and manufacture solutions that enable our customers to eliminate plastic,” Jeff Bassett, Footprint senior vice president of marketing, said.

Bassett explained that Footprint’s headquarters is currently in a 28,000 square foot facility in Gilbert. With the relocation, the company will stay in Gilbert, but the new facility is 135,000 square feet.

Footprint plans to hire about 260 people, and it is looking to fill a wide range of jobs. Bassett said Footprint is interested in hiring people for jobs ranging from “technical as high as a PhD all the way to factory workers, line workers, packer stackers. Part of what we’re doing with this relocation is we’re taking our corporate headquarters and we’re tacking on about 100,000 square feet of manufacturing.”

The town of Gilbert and Arizona assisted Footprint with the decision to move and the relocation process.

Basset said, “working with them [the Arizona Commerce Authority] to really understand the benefits of keeping and opening manufacturing in Arizona helped go a long way.”

He also explained “the town of Gilbert was really unique in that they have their own economic development fund where they allowed us to offset some permitting fees and some other costs of development that made it very enticing to stay within Gilbert.”

In addition to help from the Arizona Commerce Authority and the town of Gilbert, Bassett said Footprint’s proximity to Arizona State University (ASU) and Mesa Community College (MCC) is a plus.

He said ASU and MCC are “looking at building a manufacturing degree curriculum track. So, that has us really interested in the respect of being able to partner with the community colleges and the universities to help develop the concept of manufacturing and to have students coming out that are trained and versed in manufacturing.”

Bassett also said Footprint is interested in ASU’s sustainability initiatives, and the company “would love to have a partnership with them, even some research components tied together with them.”

Bassett said the relocation to the larger facility is “a really exciting opportunity for us because it’s a critical puzzle piece in our long-term objectives to be able to accommodate our customers to eliminate multiple different sources of plastic.

An open house for the new headquarters is slated for Oct. 23.