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Battery plant announcement provides charge to community
3/13/2010
By BEN BEVERSLUIS
The Holland Sentinel
Posted Mar 13, 2010 @ 05:30 AM
Holland, MI — LG Chem executive gets standing ovation during Friday’s event
Jae Ham didn’t seem to be expecting the rock star welcome.
The soft-spoken senior vice president of LG Chem was given a standing ovation at the formal announcement Friday that his Korean-based firm would be building a $303 million, 650,000-square-foot factory to make lithium-ion battery cells in Holland.
Ham motioned for the scores of local dignitaries, community leaders and business people to be seated, but the moment was indicative of the local excitement about the multi-national corporation picking Holland.
Even Doug Parks, senior vice president of the Michigan Economic Development Corp., departed from his prepared script.
“This is very cool,” he said with a broad smile.
More than 400 new advanced manufacturing jobs are anticipated by full production in 2013, but beyond that, several speakers noted the occasion was crowning Holland as the “center of lithium-ion battery cell production in North America,” as Holland Mayor Kurt Dykstra put it.
“In any community’s history there are defining moments,” he said, and in years to come, Friday’s announcement will be remembered as one of those moments.
Parks talked of Michigan’s efforts to attract the top battery manufacturers, such as LG Chem, to Michigan. Compact Power, Inc., of Troy, an LG Chem subsidiary, will operate the local plant.
“If Michigan is the battery capital of the world,” he said, “Holland will
be the battery capital of Michigan.”
Ham said the selection process was not an easy one, but that the company was swayed by the area’s well-developed infrastruture, “skilled and talented workforce” and commitment of city and community representatives.
He cited Michigan’s goal of becoming a leader in green energy and thanked the state and federal governments for their assistance. Because of it, he said, the plant is being built much sooner than it otherwise would have been.
A federal Department of Energy grant of $151.4 million will pay about half of the plant costs.
DOE official Dave Howell said the grants are targeted at making the country less oil-dependent, at protecting the environment and at creating jobs as part of the recovery act.
“This is an historic moment for our community,” said Randy Thelen, president of Lakeshore Advantage, the private economic development agency that spearheaded the campaign to bring LG Chem to Holland.
Area business leaders are particularly excited about the long-term impact of the Compact Power plant on top of the Johnson Controls-Saft battery plant set to come on line next year.
Not all jobs are equal, and lithium-ion plant jobs will be good ones, said Jud Bradford, senior vice president of business development at Bradford Company.
Beyond the hundreds of advanced manufacturing jobs at the plants, he pointed out, “This is an emerging technology that is going to require research and engineering and development and testing,” creating more “long-term and upper-level” jobs.
Copyright 2010 The Holland Sentinel. Some rights reserved
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