Over the last two years – dating back to March of 2019, SK Innovation, a manufacturing giant from South Korea, has been building what is the largest manufacturing investment ever made in Georgia. Announced in two phases, the $2.6 billion facility in Jackson County is slated to produce batteries for 310,000 electric vehicles per year.
The 2.4 million square foot plant would employ 2,600 people and potentially still just be a piece of the total operations in Commerce, with potential investment totaling nearly $5 billion.
But there is a hitch. An intellectual property dispute with South Korean rival LG Energy Solutions resulted in a decision by the U.S. International Trade Commission in February and a 10-year import ban on some of SKI’s battery products. LG alleged that SK Innovation had stolen 22 trade secrets and the Commission ultimately agreed, noting that SKI would not have been able to gain the illegally acquired knowledge in less than 10 years. The decision could mean the closure – or more accurately, never opening of the plant in Commerce.
The LG Group could be the big winner if the decision is allowed to stand – but President Joe Biden has until April 9 to overturn the decision. LG CEO Jong Hyum Kim has already contacted Senator Raphael Warnock’s office about his company taking over the plant or that it could help run the plant if another entity purchases it.
SKI quickly shot down that idea. “LG Energy Solution’s intention of acquiring SK Innovation’s Georgia plant in a letter sent to a U.S. senator is nothing more than a move solely intended to affect President Joe Biden’s veto decision,” SK Innovation said in a statement Tuesday.
State officials are lobbying the Biden administration hard to overturn the decision. Governor Brian Kemp has sent a letter to President Biden urging for overturning. Kemp noted the plant’s potential central role in furthering the electrification of U.S. vehicles and the advantage for the supply chain – both items that have been publicly cited as key pieces of the Biden agenda.
“On behalf of the people of Georgia, I respectfully request that you exercise the authority granted to you under law to disapprove the ITC ruling on grounds that it is contrary to the public interest and will seriously jeopardize your administration’s environmental and economic goals,” said Kemp.
Public Service Commissioner (and electric vehicle aficionado) Tim Echols just published a piece in Clean Technica pleading with the Biden administration to veto “this misguided decision.”
“The selection of EVs are growing every year with cost and range the two primary obstacles,” said Echols. “The SKI battery plant with Georgia-produced batteries will go a long way to lowering the costs for EVs.”
Echols added in the piece, “This is not a close call: President Biden must act, and he must act soon. If not, the massive plant will be a monument to a failed effort to make Georgia the center of the electric vehicle supply chain.”
In the meantime, LG has just announced an investment of $4.5 billion in plants in the U.S. expanding its own battery capacity here. None of that investment is in Georgia. Yet anyway.
