St. Joseph County preparing for new EV battery plant project
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Officials in St. Joseph County remain optimistic that a 656-acre site in New Carlisle will be chosen for a more than $3 billion electric vehicle battery cell plant. General Motors last month announced a partnership with Samsung SDI in South Korea to build the plant, though a location was not identified.
On Tuesday, the county will begin the process to amend a tax abatement and economic development agreement that was approved for a similar – but now canceled – project to fit the new venture from GM and Samsung.
The original tax incentives and development agreement were approved last September for GM’s proposed $2.4 billion EV battery plant that was being developed with South Korea’s LG Energy Solution through the companies’ Ultium Cells joint venture. A site for that project had not yet been determined.
However, those plans were put on hold in January after GM and LG failed to come to an agreement on the project.
South Bend Regional Chamber of Commerce CEO Jeff Rea told Inside INdiana Business, officials will go through action with the county council, county commissioners and county redevelopment commission “affirming the action they took last September, but with the new company involved this time.”
The effort on Tuesday will simply be to begin the process on the record, but a public hearing with specific details won’t take place until May 23.
Rea said as GM and Samsung come to terms with their project, there will likely be some updates on the capital investment and jobs related to the project.
“We have reason to believe that the investment will be similar or more than what we saw before, and we expect the job numbers to be similar as well,” Rea said. “What the council will consider on the 23rd, we’ll take a closer look at that. Generally, we don’t anticipate really any major changes.”
The original Ultium Cells project was expected to bring about 1,600 jobs to the area.
The site being considered for the project is located inside the Indiana Enterprise Center in New Carlisle, which is about 15 miles due west of South Bend and about 160 miles north of Indianapolis.
Even after the original Ultium Cells project fell through, Rea and other officials in the region remained confident that the New Carlisle site could be considered for the new GM/Samsung project, primarily due to the prep work that had already been completed.
“Most major projects in the country have looked at this site given its zoning already in place, the real estate control, the access to power and the access to water made it very, very attractive to quite a few users,” Rea said. “We’ve maintained the close contact with the company throughout the process. We know that there are a lot of things that they have to do on their end, and we know we remain a serious contender for this.”
Even if the New Carlisle site isn’t chosen for the EV battery plant, Rea said officials are also confident that another project could find its way to the property.
“We’ve been in this weird position here where we have people interested in the site, but a user pretty far along in the process,” he said. “So we’d obviously go back to some of those other users who have expressed some interest there.”
Inside INdiana Business will have more on the GM/Samsung project and the county’s efforts to bring it to New Carlisle when it becomes available later this month.