Yahoo Finance Kansas’ huge Panasonic battery plant is coming along. Next: Hiring for its 4,000 jobs
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The largest economic development project in Kansas’ history is on track to open in spring 2025, with the launch of Panasonic Energy’s new electric vehicle battery facility in De Soto.
On Thursday, Panasonic plant officials provided an inside look of their construction progress to members of the media, giving the group behind the scenes access to the facility as construction continues.
The $4 billion electric vehicle battery plant — which the company touts as a key driver of economic growth and development in the area — began construction in November 2022. When completed, the plant will produce lithium-ion batteries for electric cars.
“We want to make sure everybody has an electric vehicle, just like the personal computer, and generally, heading towards a clean energy society,” said Innocent Chikunya, Vice President of Operations.
It’s not the company’s first experience opening such a massive battery plant.
Panasonic Energy of North America (PENA) in Reno, NV, is one of the world’s largest lithium-ion battery factories, surpassing six billion EV battery cells shipped, according to a statement. There Reno battery manufacturing facility, Gigafactory 1, has been running since 2017, and the company says they are now bringing the experience and lessons learned from Nevada to Kansas.
In 2017, Panasonic shipped it’s first mass-produced batteries, and, within a year, they had shipped 100 million cells. By 2019, that number had gone up to a billion cells, later doubling.
“And right now, we are hitting on the dose of 10 billion cells,” Chikunya said.
The new Kansas facility will help Panasonic continue to support the growth of the electric vehicle industry in the United States, company officials said.
“We’re very excited by the backup that we have in terms of experience, in terms of the technological advancement that Panasonic brings,” Chikunya said.
Not only do they want to bring sales to Kansas, company officials said, they want to bring jobs and take advantage of infrastructure and efficiency in Kansas, in part by having a supply chain that is American based.
Construction plans, progress
What’s currently still a construction site, officials noted, that required a guided tour for media on a shuttle for safety reasons, will become a five million square foot production facility that will be the largest battery factory in the world.
Jeff van Heel, a construction executive, provided a comparison to help people grasp the immense size of the building. He compared it to being the size of two cruise ships, several 747 airplanes, the Empire State Building, and the Statue of Liberty, all placed next to the building, giving an idea of the massive dimensions of the building.
They also shared a three-dimensional representation video, providing a preview of what the building will look like once complete.
The facility is divided into two sections, or what construction officials described as wing one and wing two. There will be four lines of battery production in one wing and four lines in the second wing, van Heel said.
“It’s a ‘U’ shape. The bottom of the ‘U’ is going to be a lot of shipping, packing and some sub-supplier vendor space... that makes some of the parts and pieces that go into the actual battery manufacturing,” van Heel said.
In terms of construction progress, officials said they’re completely done with wing one, as far as the infrastructure of the building. About five weeks ago, van Heel said they started moving in the actual cell production equipment, and will be continuing and finishing wing two next. Wing one’s interior, dry rooms, and cell manufacturing rooms are complete, allowing them to move in the processing equipment.
“We started back in October and in 10 months, we dried everything out and started moving in the the process equipment,” van Heel said. “So it’s been moving very rapidly.”
A lot of the external infrastructure is already finished, he said.
“We’ve got sewer now connected, wastewater, water city type infrastructure that we need to have prepared and ready for us to go,” van Heel said.
The plant requires a significant amount of energy, he said. To handle that, Evergy installed large steel main transmission lines around the plant earlier this year. They also built a switch yard, an area outside the plant where the voltage is changed and electricity is sent to the transmission lines. The plant will be energizing the switch yard, van Heel said.
The power from the switch yard won’t be needed until August, so they are currently ahead of schedule, officials said. Once it is powered up in August, plant officials told media that residents shouldn’t expect anything to to change with their energy.
New facility, new jobs
Kristen Walters, vice president of human resources, is in charge of bringing on team members to join the company.
As reported previously by The Star, the Panasonic plant will bring 4,000-plus jobs to the area. Panasonic officials told media Thursday, they remain committed to hiring for those 4,000 jobs over the next couple of years. Panasonic estimated starting pay to range between $20 and $30 an hour.
“We’ll be about 500 employees by the end of the year, as we start to gear up for production on the first line,” Walters said.
In the next couple of months, they will have recruiting and marketing campaigns, as well as reaching out to those interested in joining their team. The said most of their recruiting efforts will be focused on the surrounding area, although they could not confirm the percentage of local hires they expect to have.
“We’re really excited about what we have to offer to new employees. We have a comprehensive benefit package,” Walters said.
The benefits package will include paid time-off, health and welfare insurance, education assistance and a company 401K. The majority of their job opportunities will be in their battery production area, with four teams and 12-hour shifts for their 24/7 operation.
The Panasonic plant is less than a year from completion, officials said.
