Trump set to announce Audi plant in Middle Georgia at rally

PERRY — President Donald Trump is expected to announce a sprawling new Audi plant will be built in Middle Georgia, according to Bloomberg News and officials familiar with the negotiations.

Trump was set to highlight the development at a rally in Perry, which sits near a megasite where Audi parent Volkswagen plans to build the plant.

The facility would be built about 5 miles west of I-75 on the north side of Ga. 96 on the eastern outskirts of Fort Valley in Peach County.

A new auto plant by an esteemed luxury brand would burnish Georgia’s credentials as a hub of automotive manufacturing in the South. Hyundai operates a sprawling electric vehicle factory near Savannah and Kia operates a plant in West Georgia. EV startup Rivian, meanwhile, plans a factory an hour east of Atlanta.

The future Audi property, at least for now, is about half the size of the site of Hyundai’s electric vehicle assembly factory site along I-16 near Savannah, but it is expandable to about 2,400 acres, according to the officials, who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

The state first acquired the property, about 1,100 acres at the time, in a mid-2022 partnership with the Development Authority of Peach County, naming it the Middle Georgia Megasite.

The acquisition was funded by proceeds from the sale of the Chatham County Economic Development site, which officials said in a statement at the time had been purchased the year before by Amazon for a distribution facility.

Gov. Brian Kemp said at the time that “it is very encouraging to see a new, fully prepared megasite that will create more high-quality jobs for hardworking Georgians in rural parts of the state.”

Local officials had remained tight-lipped about details of the pending announcement in the run-up to Trump’s visit.

As word trickled out late in the week that Trump would make the big-splash, regional economic development project known to the public at Saturday’s rally, there was speculation the venue was moved 20 miles south from Macon, its originally announced city, to Houston County’s county seat, Perry, because of its proximity to the megasite less than 10 minutes away by car.

Bibb, Houston and Peach, the three counties that have agreed to back and promote the site, earlier this year pledged $7 million apiece to market it and bring it up to industry standards as needed.

The counties are home to a combined population of more than 360,000 people. Another 130,000 or so people live in surrounding counties within about a 45-minute drive.