South Korean giant Hyundai Motor Group made official Friday its plans to build a sprawling electric vehicle factory in Bryan County near Savannah.
The project is expected to employ as many as 8,100 people and involve a roughly $5.5 billion investment, ranking as one of the largest corporate recruitments in Georgia’s history.
The project comes just six months after Georgia announced the $5 billion Rivian electric vehicle factory to be built an hour east of Atlanta.
In just the last few years, three of Georgia’s biggest recruitment projects ever have all been related to electric vehicles. In 2018, the state landed a battery plant from South Korean conglomerate SK Innovation. It’s all part of a big bet by Georgia leaders to ensure a place in the electrified future of the auto industry.
Below are other blockbuster manufacturing projects still in operation in Georgia. Though not an exhaustive list, the projects employ thousands of Georgians and reshaped their communities.
Hyundai Motor Group
Location: Bryan County
Jobs: 8,100
Project description: A roughly $5.5 billion manufacturing plant for electric vehicles and the batteries to power them. Hyundai Motor subsidiary Kia already has a plant in West Point, Ga., with a network of suppliers. The new factory will have direct highway and rail access to seaports in Savannah and Brunswick. An incentive package for the factory has not been announced, but it will likely rival the one for Rivian’s $5 billion EV factory.
Rivian
Location: Southern Walton and Morgan counties
Jobs: 7,500
Project description: A manufacturing plant for battery-powered luxury trucks, sport utility vehicles and delivery vans. The project also includes a battery facility on about 2,000 acres between Social Circle and Rutledge. State and Rivian officials said the factory also will attract spinoff jobs from Rivian suppliers that are expected to build their own factories in the years ahead. State and local officials recently outlined an incentive package totaling $1.5 billion in tax breaks, grants, free land, worker training and infrastructure improvements.
Credit: SK Battery America
Credit: SK Battery America
SK Battery America
Location: Commerce
Jobs: 2,600 originally but recently expanded to 3,000
Project description: South Korean conglomerate SK Innovation announced plans in 2018 to build a sprawling factory to produce lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles. The plant, which eventually increased to an expected $2.6 billion investment, will supply batteries to Ford and Volkswagen for new EVs. At full capacity, the factory is expected to produce enough batteries to power 300,000 EVs per year. The recruitment of SK also came with an incentive package of about $300 million in grants, tax credits, free land and worker training.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Kia Motors
Location: West Point
Jobs: More than 2,700
Project description: When it opened in 2009, Kia’s first U.S. automotive assembly plant transformed West Point and surrounding cities that had suffered from the decline of textile manufacturing. Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia builds its popular Sorrento and Telluride SUVs and the new K5 sedan in West Point. Those models are sold in the U.S. and shipped to other countries. Kia chose the West Point location, in part, because it is near corporate cousin Hyundai’s factory near Montgomery, Ala., and the companies share suppliers. Kia invested $1.8 billion in the factory and ultimately recruited numerous suppliers to Georgia, which created thousands of additional jobs. Incentives offered to Kia totaled more than $400 million, according to past reporting by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Credit: GULFSTREAM
Credit: GULFSTREAM
Gulfstream
Location: Savannah
Jobs: 9,700 in Georgia, including corporate jobs
Project description: Gulfstream came to Savannah in 1967 with 100 employees. Today, it operates a massive campus that surrounds the Savannah airport. Gulfstream’s sleek private jets are bought mostly by major corporations, governments and celebrities. The company builds several models in Savannah, including the G600, the G650/G650ER, the G700 and G800.
Credit: HANDOUTAJC file photo
Credit: HANDOUTAJC file photo
Bell Bomber (now Lockheed Martin)
Location: Marietta
Jobs: About 29,000 at its World War II peak; 4,500 today
Project description: After the U.S. entered World War II, the federal government selected Marietta for an air field and aerospace factory known as Air Force Plant 6 where giant B-29 bombers rolled off the assembly line. In World War II, Bell Bomber employed about 29,000, and the factory supercharged development of Cobb County. After the war, the factory lay largely dormant until 1951, when Lockheed restarted operations amid the Korean War.
The Marietta plant is one of Lockheed’s main manufacturing centers. Today, it builds C-130J military cargo planes, performs upgrades to C-5 Galaxy transports and P-3 Orion patrol aircraft, and builds components for all three versions of the F-35 stealth fighter.
Sources: AJC archives, Select Georgia, the Georgia Department of Economic Development, Hyundai Motor Group, Rivian, Kia and Gulfstream.
