But they are still more costly than just building in a better location of your choosing.
If you ran a business whose job was to etch, treat and anodize aluminum components which are destined to be components of airframes of (mostly) Boeing aircraft, and all your customers are located in the southern Los Angeles area, and shipping the components to be treated requires flatbed trucks, would you locate your business a hundred miles away in the high desert?
First i would question why my customers decided to be in that area. Then I would consider buying the land adjacent to those customers so i can work more closely with them. Then, if that is not an option, I would discuss the costs of shipping with my customers, which I would ask them to pay for, versus the risks of building near them, pissing off people in the surrounding area, and alienating THEIR customers and employees. People who live near those factories often work there. I would totally expect a strike or mass quitting if enough people see their homes ruined.
OR, I would see if it's possible to develop new technology to let them switch to sometjing else, like carbon fiber or plastic. Big reason we don't have awesome electric cars is because gas is so heavily subsidized. Without that, we'd have a lot faster technological progress.
Well, Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas which has plants in the southern Los Angeles area and that is the heart of the defense industry and near two large airports. There is no questioning why they are there. Hundreds of other companies which offer contracting services to the defense industry are in the same area.
Oddly enough, an aluminum etching service is located one hundred miles away in the high desert, virtually in the middle of nowhere. I don't have an answer to why, but I have been to both Boeing and the high desert company on several occasions.
My main point is, there can be many reasons why a company sets up where they do. Minimal regulations related to acidic etching solutions? Maybe the owner owned a large plot of desert land? Who knows?