For decades, manufacturing location decisions were often dominated by a relatively predictable set of considerations: labor costs, land availability, utilities, taxation, and proximity to customers. These factors remain important, but the global operating environment has changed.
Supply chain disruption, geopolitical uncertainty, changing trade policies, longer and more complex sourcing networks, and pressure to serve customers more reliably have pushed logistics and cross-border connectivity much higher on the investment agenda.
As a result, choosing where to manufacture is no longer simply a real estate or production-cost decision. It is increasingly a supply chain design decision.
A factory may offer competitive production economics, but its strategic value is reduced if raw materials cannot reach it efficiently, finished products face limited routing options, customs procedures create persistent friction, or the location provides poor access to the markets the manufacturer ultimately wants to serve.
For companies considering international expansion, a more useful question is therefore not simply, “Where can we manufacture competitively?”
It is: “Which location gives our supply chain the strongest combination of production capability, logistics connectivity, market access, and resilience?”
Jordan provides an interesting case study of how these considerations are beginning to converge.
From Factory Economics to Network Economics
The economics of a manufacturing investment should not end at the factory gate.
A company sourcing inputs internationally and selling products across several markets operates as part of a network. Raw materials must move from suppliers to production facilities. Finished goods must then move through customs, road networks, ports, airports, distribution centers, and border crossings before reaching customers.
Every stage introduces cost, time, complexity, and risk.
This means that a lower production cost in one location does not automatically translate into a lower total supply chain cost.
An effective location strategy should consider at least four dimensions simultaneously:
- the efficiency of inbound supply flows;
- the connectivity of outbound logistics;
- access to target markets under applicable trade arrangements; and
- the ability to maintain alternative routes and markets when conditions change.
These considerations are especially important for export-oriented manufacturers, for whom the domestic market may represent only a small proportion of total sales.
For such businesses, cross-border connectivity is part of the manufacturing proposition itself.
Geography Still Matters
Digitalization has transformed supply chain management, but it has not eliminated geography.
Physical cargo still needs to travel between suppliers, factories, ports, borders, warehouses, and customers. Distance, infrastructure and available transport modes continue to affect lead times and logistics costs.
Jordan's geographic position is therefore relevant when considering the country as an industrial location.
Situated in the Middle East, Jordan shares borders with Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Israel and the Palestinian territories. Its road network connects industrial areas with regional land routes, while the Port of Aqaba provides Jordan's principal maritime gateway to international shipping.
Queen Alia International Airport provides an additional connection for air cargo and time-sensitive movements.
This creates an important distinction between manufacturing in a market and manufacturing from a platform.
A manufacturer located in Jordan may serve domestic demand, but an export-oriented operation can also be designed around regional road freight and international maritime or air connectivity.
The value of that model depends, of course, on the individual manufacturer's suppliers, customers, product characteristics and shipping requirements. There is no universally optimal location.
But this is precisely why location analysis should be conducted as part of supply chain design rather than treated as an isolated property decision.
Market Access Must Be Evaluated Alongside Physical Connectivity
Infrastructure alone does not determine the competitiveness of a cross-border manufacturing operation.
Trade policy matters as well.
A factory can be physically close to a market while still facing tariff or regulatory barriers that materially affect the economics of exporting there. Conversely, a production location with preferential access to a target market may create advantages that compensate for greater physical distance.
Jordan has developed trade relationships with several major markets, including the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Arab countries.
The country also has Qualified Industrial Zones, or QIZs, which have historically played an important role in export-oriented manufacturing, particularly in sectors such as garments.
For manufacturers assessing Jordan, these arrangements should not simply be treated as a list of incentives.
They should be incorporated into a broader landed-cost and market-access analysis.
Companies need to examine product-specific rules of origin, tariff classifications, eligibility requirements, customs procedures, transportation costs, and the destination markets relevant to their own products.
This is particularly important because preferential trade arrangements do not automatically make every product or every supply chain competitive.
The strategic value emerges when production location, sourcing structure, rules of origin, logistics routes and destination markets are designed together.
The Importance of Multimodal Optionality
Supply chain resilience is often discussed in terms of additional inventory or alternative suppliers. Location strategy provides another form of resilience: routing optionality.
A manufacturing location that can access more than one transport mode or serve multiple markets may give companies greater flexibility when disruptions occur.
For Jordan-based manufacturers, international cargo can potentially move through different channels depending on the product and destination.
Road transportation is particularly relevant for regional trade, while the Port of Aqaba provides access to maritime transportation for longer-distance international shipments. Air freight can serve higher-value or time-sensitive products where the economics justify it.
The objective is not necessarily to use every mode.
It is to avoid designing a supply chain around a single assumption.
Manufacturers evaluating a new production location should therefore map:
Supplier → inbound gateway → factory → outbound gateway → customer
for their major material and product flows.
They should then test what happens when one component of that route becomes slower, more expensive or temporarily unavailable.
This simple exercise can reveal risks that are often invisible when a location decision is evaluated only through land prices, wages and tax incentives.
Industrial Zones Can Reduce the Complexity of International Expansion
Another factor in supply chain performance is the environment surrounding the manufacturing operation.
Entering a new country requires coordination across multiple functions. A manufacturer may need to deal with land, construction, utilities, labor, customs, licensing, security, warehousing, transportation and government procedures.
The challenge becomes greater when the investor is managing these requirements from another country.
Industrial and development zones can help address this complexity by concentrating infrastructure and investor services within an established industrial environment.
Ad-Dulayl Industrial Park & Development Zone (IDMC) in Jordan provides one example
Located approximately 30 kilometers from Amman, the industrial community operates within a Development Zone and Qualified Industrial Zone framework. Manufacturers operating there are connected to Jordan's road network and wider trade infrastructure.
The development zones managed by Ad-Dulayl Industrial Park & Real Estate Company cover approximately 1.44 million square meters and host local and international industrial operations.
The significance of such environments is not simply the availability of industrial land.
For international manufacturers, the more important question is whether the surrounding ecosystem can reduce the friction between an investment decision and actual production.
Export Performance as a Test of Connectivity
One way to evaluate an industrial location is to examine whether businesses operating there are actually able to move significant volumes of goods into international markets.
At IDMC, exports from industries operating within the zone reached approximately USD 710 million in 2025, while total industrial investment has reached approximately USD 350 million.
The zone's industrial operations support approximately 25,000 jobs.
These figures are useful not simply as measures of economic scale, but because export activity provides evidence of functioning cross-border supply chains.
A manufacturing cluster generating hundreds of millions of dollars in annual exports requires coordination between factories, transportation providers, customs processes, border or port infrastructure, and overseas customers.
This illustrates a broader principle: industrial development and logistics development are mutually reinforcing.
Factories create demand for transportation, warehousing, customs services and other supply chain capabilities. Those capabilities, in turn, can make the industrial location more attractive to future manufacturers.
Over time, this can create an industrial ecosystem rather than a collection of isolated factories.
Warehousing and Logistics Should Be Planned with Manufacturing
This relationship becomes particularly important when industrial areas expand.
Warehousing is sometimes treated as a secondary land use that follows manufacturing growth. A more integrated approach considers logistics infrastructure from the beginning.
Manufacturers need space for raw materials, components, finished goods, spare parts and packaging. They may also require consolidation, distribution, customs-related services or third-party logistics support.
When these functions are located efficiently relative to production facilities and transportation corridors, they can reduce unnecessary movements and improve operational flexibility.
IDMC‘s current expansion illustrates this approach. A new area of approximately 386,852 square meters is being developed with capacity for industrial activities as well as logistics, warehousing and supporting services.
The broader lesson is applicable beyond Jordan: industrial zones should increasingly be designed as supply chain ecosystems, not simply subdivisions of industrial plots.
What Manufacturers Should Evaluate Before Choosing a Location
A manufacturer considering an international production location should therefore expand its due-diligence framework beyond traditional investment incentives.
The analysis should begin with the actual supply chain.
Where will the major raw materials originate? How will they enter the country? How frequently will they move? What inventory buffers will be required?
The same questions should then be applied to outbound cargo.
Where are the principal customers? Which ports, border crossings or airports will serve them? What are the likely transit times? Are alternative routes available? What customs and documentation requirements apply?
Trade agreements should then be tested at the product level, rather than assumed to create universal advantages.
Rules of origin, HS classification, tariff treatment and other compliance requirements can materially affect whether a theoretical trade advantage translates into a commercial one.
Finally, companies should evaluate the industrial ecosystem itself.
Infrastructure, workforce availability, utilities, warehousing, transportation providers and the ability to obtain support during establishment and expansion can influence both operating performance and management complexity.
Location Strategy as a Resilience Tool
The supply chain disruptions of recent years have encouraged companies to rethink assumptions that once appeared permanent.
The result is not necessarily the end of globalization. Rather, it is a move toward more deliberate network design.
Manufacturers are considering supplier diversification, nearshoring, regionalization, additional inventory, alternative transportation routes and multiple production locations.
Location strategy belongs in the same conversation.
For some manufacturers targeting the Middle East and international export markets, Jordan may warrant closer analysis because it combines an established industrial base with regional geography, international trade relationships and multiple forms of transportation connectivity.
That does not mean Jordan will be the optimal location for every manufacturer.
No country is.
The more important point is that location decisions should be based on the complete movement of goods, from supplier to factory to customer.
The Factory Is Only One Node
Modern manufacturing competitiveness cannot be understood by looking at the factory in isolation.
A production facility is one node in a much larger international network.
Its performance depends partly on what happens inside its walls, but also on how effectively materials reach it, how reliably products leave it, what markets those products can access, and how quickly the supply chain can respond when conditions change.
That changes the way manufacturing locations should be evaluated.
The strongest location is not necessarily the one with the lowest headline operating cost. It may be the one that creates the best overall balance between production economics, logistics connectivity, trade access, operational support and resilience.
For manufacturers evaluating international expansion, this broader perspective can lead to better investment decisions.
And for countries and industrial zones seeking to attract manufacturing investment, it carries an equally important lesson:
The future of industrial competitiveness will depend not only on the ability to host factories, but on the ability to connect those factories efficiently with the world.