By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1
BlueOval SK has announced it plans to begin production by 2025 at a facility being constructed in southern Hardin County.
Earlier this year it was reported that Ford Motors CEO Jim Farley said the automotive company was “rethinking” its electric vehicle strategies and the need for in-house battery productions. Ford Motors also confirmed a plan to delay or cut $12 billion in electric vehicle spending after sales for such vehicles were growing at “slower-than-expected rates.”
The Kentucky battery factories, which are being built in Glendale, were originally announced by Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, along with Ford Motors and SK On representatives, in September 2021 and since that time there has been near-constant construction around exit 86 of interstate 65. As previously reported, the BlueOval SK “represents the biggest economic development project in Kentucky’s history” and the tenth largest manufacturing site in the world at 8.4 million square feet.
The Glendale park will feature two EV battery factories — named Kentucky 1 and 2 — with Kentucky 2 having no set date for production. Kentucky 1 is set to begin operations in 2025 and BlueOval SK stated in an email that the factory is still on track to begin by that date.
“We remain on schedule to begin battery production at Kentucky 1 in 2025,” the company stated. “Kentucky 1 will manufacture cells for the current E-Transit with enhanced range and F-150 Lightning beginning in 2025.”
Once completed the Kentucky factories they will produce 800,000 batteries and employ roughly 5,000 people. Due to this high employment number the focus is not only on its impact in Glendale or Hardin County, but in nearby counties as well.
BlueOval SK partnered with L. B. Schmidt and Associates, a consulting firm based in Louisville, to “provide information for its economic impact on counties surrounding Glendale.” At the time Luke Schmidt, founder and president of the firm, said Barren County may see some workers commute to Glendale but the real opportunity, he said, was in secondary industries that supply and support the battery factories.
“From my vantage point the primary spillover into Glasgow and Barren County would be the possibility of recruiting some of the supplier’s plants that will serve the EV battery industry,” Schmidt said. “Even though Kentucky is home to over 200 automotive industry suppliers, a lot of those are Japanese companies. Those companies make things like brakes, windshields, various components that go into cars, none of those suppliers will supply to any of these battery plants because you’re talking about an entirely new product line and so, while there will be supplier companies relocating to serve these battery plants, it’s a brand new industry so to speak.”
“[Barren County is] in a great place, if the industrial folks go after it, to try and go after some of those suppliers because you’re so close to Bowling Green and not that far from Elizabethtown,” Schmidt added.
