How Rivian plant stacks up to other big Georgia deals over the decades – The Atlanta Journal Constitution

Jobs: 7,500 to 10,000

Project description: A manufacturing plant for battery-powered luxury trucks, sport utility vehicles and delivery vans. The project also includes a battery facility on about 2,000 acres between Social Circle and Rutledge. State and Rivian officials said the factory also will attract spinoff jobs from Rivian suppliers that are expected to build their own factories in the years ahead. The details of the state and local incentive package aren’t fully known, but the value is likely well into the nine figures.

SK Battery America

Location: Commerce

Jobs: 2,600 expected

Project description: South Korean conglomerate SK Innovation announced plans in 2018 to build a sprawling factory to produce lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles. The plant, which eventually increased to an expected $2.6 billion investment, will supply batteries to Ford and Volkswagen for new EVs. At full capacity, the factory is expected to produce enough batteries to power 300,000 EVs per year. The recruitment of SK also came with an incentive package of about $300 million in grants, tax credits, free land and worker training.

Kia Motors

Location: West Point

Jobs: More than 2,700

Project description: When it opened in 2009, Kia’s first U.S. automotive assembly plant transformed West Point and surrounding cities that had suffered from the decline of textile manufacturing. Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia builds its popular Sorrento and Telluride SUVs and the new K5 sedan in West Point. Those models are sold in the U.S. and shipped to other countries. Kia chose the West Point location, in part, because it is near corporate cousin Hyundai’s factory near Montgomery, Ala., and the companies share suppliers. Kia invested $1.8 billion in the factory and ultimately recruited numerous suppliers to Georgia, which created thousands of additional jobs. Incentives offered to Kia totaled more than $400 million, according to past reporting by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Gulfstream

Location: Savannah

Jobs: 9,700 in Georgia, including corporate jobs

Project description: Gulfstream came to Savannah in 1967 with 100 employees. Today, it operates a massive campus that surrounds the Savannah airport. Gulfstream’s sleek private jets are bought mostly by major corporations, governments and celebrities. The company builds several models in Savannah, including the G600, the G650/G650ER, the G700 and G800.

Bell Bomber (now Lockheed Martin)

Location: Marietta

Jobs: About 29,000 at its World War II peak; 4,500 today

Project description: After the U.S. entered World War II, the federal government selected Marietta for an air field and aerospace factory known as Air Force Plant 6 where giant B-29 bombers rolled off the assembly line. At its peak, the Bell Bomber employed about 29,000, and the factory supercharged development of Cobb County. After the war, the factory lay largely dormant until 1951, when Lockheed restarted operations amid the Korean War.

The Marietta plant is one of Lockheed’s main manufacturing centers. Today, it builds C-130J military cargo planes, performs upgrades to C-5 Galaxy transports and P-3 Orion patrol aircraft, and builds components for all three versions of the F-35 stealth fighter.

Sources: AJC archives, Select Georgia, the Georgia Department of Economic Development, Kia and Gulfstream.

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