Opening of Georgia EV battery plant to be delayed after ICE raid
ELLABELL ― From the outside, the electric vehicle battery plant next to Hyundai’s EV assembly factory looks ready for operations.
The only evidence that construction is ongoing inside the HL-GA Battery facility are the dozen or so lifts and hoists sitting outside the doors and several yet-to-be paved roads and parking lots.
That work was interrupted last week — and the plant’s opening delayed by two to three months, a top official said Thursday — by an immigration raid that triggered an international firestorm. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested about 475 laborers, including 316 Koreans, accused of working at the site illegally.
Those Korean detainees, along with 14 others from Asian countries, flew back to Korea on Thursday after a week at a federal detention center in Folkston, located in southeast Georgia near the Florida state line. According to a Korean government official, their citizens were technicians and specialists tasked with setting up machinery at the Georgia factory site, which sits along I-16 west of Savannah.
That work had progressed to the test run phase, according to multiple people who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Prior to the raid, the factory was to open early next year.
Hyundai CEO José Muñoz announced the delay Thursday in an interview with Bloomberg. He cited a shortage of workers with the expertise to perform the specialized tasks.
A spokesman for Hyundai’s partner in the joint venture battery plant, LG Energy Solutions, declined to answer construction-related questions and instead issued a statement.
“Our focus remains making all-out efforts for the release of detained individuals from LGES and partner companies,” the statement reads. “LG Energy Solution remains committed to our projects in the U.S. and will continue to navigate the circumstances with the aim to continue necessary investments and business.”
Production at Hyundai’s EV assembly plant is ongoing.
In related news, Hyundai’s Muñoz said the long-discussed plan to add production of hybrid vehicles to the Metaplant is moving forward next year. Hyundai in 2024 applied for environmental permits that would allow for storage of gasoline and other gas-engine products at the facility.
Hybrids are propelled by electric batteries that are charged while in motion by a traditional gasoline-powered motor, resulting in greater fuel efficiency. Plans call for as much as one-third of the vehicles produced at the factory will be hybrids.
The scope of the Sept. 4 immigration raid — and the headlines generated both in the U.S. and South Korea — have increased scrutiny on the battery plant’s construction. Two workers died on the site in forklift-related accidents earlier this year and a Savannah-area labor union leader in March accused HL-GA Battery of using illegal labor to install plumbing and pipefittings.
The arrest of so many Koreans in last week’s raid has fueled speculation that those workers were going to be the core of the battery plant’s workforce once production began. Savannah’s lead economic development official, Trip Tollison, challenged that notion in an interview earlier this week.
The Korean detainees were to leave the United States after the plant came online and training of locally based personnel was completed, “as is to be expected,” said Tollison of the Savannah Joint Development Authority. The Savannah JDA, a coalition of five county economic development organizations within the region, partnered with the state in 2022 to attract the Hyundai plant, the largest economic development project in state history at $7.6 billion.
The neighboring auto assembly plant came online last October and is producing more than 200 EVs a week. Until the HL-GA Battery plant comes online, Hyundai is sourcing lithium battery packs from the SK Battery America factory located northeast of Atlanta along I-85 in Commerce. SK is a Korea-based company and their plant makes EV batteries for other automakers, such as Ford.
The HL-GA Battery factory on the Hyundai Metaplant campus is designed to produce batteries for 300,000 EVs annually. A separate neighboring facility operated by a Hyundai subsidiary, Hyundai Mobis, is to assemble the power cells into battery packs for installation in the EVs.
Hyundai and LG Energy Solutions have long partnered in EV and hybrid-vehicle manufacturing. LG has supplied batteries for Hyundai models since 2009 and the two companies have another joint-venture battery plant in Indonesia. That factory began making power cells in July 2024.
The immigration raid has prompted Hyundai to increase its oversight of the HL-GA Battery project. The chief manufacturing officer of the automaker’s North American operations, Chris Susock, assumed management of the Hyundai auto assembly factory earlier this year following the second HL-GA Battery construction site death. Hyundai is now expanding his scope to include the entire 3,000-acre campus, which is home to seven Hyundai-affiliated businesses in addition to the assembly plant.
Susock will act as a “mayor” for the greater Hyundai Metaplant, according to a Hyundai official.
Susock’s expanded role is meant to increase accountability from the organizations operating on the site and to affirm Hyundai’s commitment to the Georgia plant, the official said.
That assurance comes as South Korea’s president called for improvements to the U.S. visa system. President Lee Jae Myung said Thursday said that without reforms that would allow Koreans companies to send skilled workers to U.S.-based sites without fear of arrest there will be a “major impact” on future investments.
“It’s not like these are long-term workers,” Lee said in a speech marking his 100th day in office. “When you build a factory or install equipment at a factory, you need technicians, but the United States doesn’t have that workforce and yet they won’t issue visas to let our people stay and do the work.
“If that’s not possible, then establishing a local factory in the United States will either come with severe disadvantages or become very difficult for our companies. They will wonder whether they should even do it.”
About the Author
Adam Van Brimmer is a journalist who covers politics and Coastal Georgia news for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
