$5.8 billion battery manufacturing center is taking shape in Western Kentucky

Construction is progressing on two giant manufacturing plants in Hardin County that will employ 5,000 people and produce batteries for Ford and Lincoln electric vehicles.

The $5.8 billion BlueOval SK Battery Park in Glendale, outside Elizabethtown, is on track to begin production in 2025, the battery park’s operators said in a news release.

The facility is a joint venture between Ford Motor Co. and SK On, a South Korea-based developer of electric vehicle batteries, and is the largest economic development project in Kentucky’s history.

Ford has set a goal of producing 2 million electric vehicles a year by the end of 2026, and the completion of the battery park is a key component of that.

“BlueOval SK Battery Park will be at the core of the electrification of the North American auto market,” SK On President and CEO Jee Dong-seob said in the release announcing that ground had been broken. “We expect SK On and Ford’s leadership in the global electric vehicle market to be solidified through BlueOval SK.”

At the approval of the state legislature and Beshear, the project has been granted nearly $300 million in incentives as well as the 1,500-acre site.

The two general contractor builders on the project are Barton Marlow and Gray Construction. Gray Construction is a Lexington-based company owned in part by former Lexington Mayor and current Kentucky Secretary of Transportation Jim Gray.

Gray, who is still the non-executive chairman of the company, told the Herald-Leader that he recused himself “from anything related to the Ford project.”

Next year, the Kentucky Community and Technical College System will begin construction of a $25 million training center on the battery park property, where the plants’ 5,000 employees will be trained.

The Elizabethtown Community and Technical College BlueOval SK Training Center, scheduled to be finished in 2024, will be the only “co-branded learning facility” in the KCTCS system, according to the release.

“The curriculum within the 42,000 square-foot training facility will support battery knowledge, roles and skills. BlueOval SK will train employees in SK On’s proprietary technical, quality and manufacturing processes in the ECTC BlueOval SK Training Center’s virtual reality labs, industrial maintenance lab, work simulation lab and ergonomics techniques classrooms,” the news release stated.

“In order to produce these batteries, we need a premier workforce that is trained in the latest battery and advanced manufacturing technology,” BlueOval SK CEO David Hahm said in the release.

A website is available for people interested in employment at the battery park.

The training center is one of several major incentives the state provided to lure the project to Kentucky. The state also offered a performance-based forgivable loan of up to $250 million to the joint venture and agreed to convey the 1,500-acre site to them, Gov. Andy Beshear said last year. The state road plan already called for improvements to the Interstate 65 interchange at where the park is located.

Ford and SK On, along with state officials, announced plans for the development of the battery park in September 2021.

Gov. Andy Beshear said the BlueOval SK Battery Park “cements Kentucky’s status as the electric vehicle battery production capital of the United States.”

In April, plans were announced for another electric vehicle battery plant that represents the second-largest private investment in Kentucky’s history. That facility, operated by Japan-based Envision AESC, will employ 2,000 people at a 512-acre site in Bowling Green.

What impact will new Ford plants have for KY economy? Think Toyota in Georgetown.

Herald-Leader reporter Austin Horn contributed to this report.