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GRAND FORKS INDUSTRIES & ASSETS

A Diverse Industry Base

Target Sectors & opportunity areas

Greater Grand Forks is home to several established, strong, and growing primary business sectors. Several traded industry sectors are strengths in the region: agribusiness and ag technology, advanced manufacturing, and autonomous systems and defense. With close ties to the University of North Dakota, the region offers a solid infrastructure to support key areas: computational and data science, energy and environmental sustainability, and human and rural health.

INDUSTRIES

A green and yellow John Deere tracked tractor pulls a large air seeder and planter implement across a freshly tilled field under a partly cloudy blue sky, kicking up a faint cloud of dust, with a strip of bright green grass in the foreground and white storage tanks and power lines visible along the horizon.

AGRIBUSINESS & AG TECHNOLOGY

Grand Forks sits in the heart of the Red River Valley, where some of the nation’s most productive farmland meets the infrastructure to process it.

A manufacturing worker adjusts a screen on manufacturing equipment.

ADVANCED MANUFACTURING

Grand Forks manufacturers span ag processing, aerospace, energy equipment, and advanced composites, backed by a foreign trade zone and direct access to two major highway systems.

Two UAS drone pilots stand in a grassy field on a partly cloudy day, both wearing bright yellow-green high-visibility safety vests and operating handheld drone controllers; one wears a white hard hat and looks down at his controller while the other wears a backwards baseball cap and concentrates on his screen, with power line poles, a utility building, and a wooden post visible in the background.

AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS & DEFENSE

Grand Forks holds more UAS industry firsts than anywhere in the country, from the first university UAS degree program to the nation’s only state-wide BVLOS network.

REGIONAL ASSETS

Two medical professionals assist to a dummy patient.

HUMAN & RURAL HEALTH

North Dakota’s only medical school calls Grand Forks home, supported by more than 65,000 square feet of dedicated research space and a network of health innovation consortia.

A young woman with shoulder-length blonde hair smiles softly as she works on a silver laptop covered with Greater Grand Forks "Way Cooler Than You Think" and "#GFisCooler" stickers, with a large wall-mounted monitor displaying lines of green and teal programming code in the background.

COMPUTATIONAL & DATA SCIENCE

Grand Forks combines UND’s Carnegie research infrastructure and a dedicated tech accelerator with a growing data center cluster, all connected by statewide gigabit internet access reaching 77% of residents.

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

Grand Forks sits outside the Bakken, but the Energy and Environmental Research Center at UND makes it the region’s hub for applied energy research and sustainability innovation.

FEATURED MEDIA

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