New Carlisle EV plant should ramp up construction by end of month

NEW CARLISLE, Ind. -- With a multi-billion-dollar electric vehicle battery plant coming to New Carlisle, ABC57 wanted to know project specifics from the county on how many jobs the venture will bring and when construction progress will be seen.

St. Joseph County Executive Director of Economic Development, Bill Schalliol, explained he estimates there will be 1000 to 1500 jobs at different points of the construction process, in addition to the 1600 jobs promised in the development agreement.

“There’s going to be a mix of those 1600 jobs, so some will be GM only jobs, some will be Samsung only jobs, some will be joint venture jobs and then they’ll be additional jobs. It’ll be kind of contract work, so probably maintenance and security and cleaning, landscaping, things like that. So, we don’t have a full breakdown on what those jobs are, but on top of that, then we’ll have all the construction jobs, so it’ll be 1600 plus whatever all those other jobs equate to,” said Schalliol.

Schalliol went on to explain that progress in construction should be seen by the end of Sep. or early Oct., saying right now the early work is being done, and has been in the works for the last year.

“Barton Malow, the principal construction management team is on site. They’ve got people out doing site work right now. They’re working on retention areas and foundation pads and things like that, so a lot of the early work is being done right now and so as soon as the rest of the crews come in that will start putting up steel and pouring foundations and things like that, those are the people we anticipate seeing in the next month, month and a half,” said Schalliol.

He also said that the batteries being made at the New Carlisle plant will be different than the batteries made at the other three GM plants, saying this should help in customer demand due to the specific product.

“The batteries that will be made at this facility are different than the batteries they’re making at the other three facilities… by the time we get this building built in about two, two and a half years, they’re going to have those other products lines ready to go. Consumer demand has been a little slower than I think everybody anticipated, but it’s one of those that, you know, it’s a process,” said Schalliol.

Schalliol said the county is in frequent communication with the plant team, and they have a call scheduled next week to work out some finer details on the project.