American Battery Factory to bring economic boost, 1,000 jobs to Tucson

TUCSON, Ariz. (KOLD News 13) - Big developments are underway for Pima County and the City of Tucson. American Battery Factory has tapped Tucson for its first battery cell gigafactory.

They’ll be producing lithium iron phosphate battery cells which can be used to power electric vehicles and other technology.

It will bring more jobs to Tucson as well as an economic boost.

″This is transformational,” said Joe Snell, Sun Corridor’s President and CEO. “This is going to have long, long reaching impact for Tucson. You’re talking about a $1.2 billion investment.”

The American Battery Factory could soon help power Tucson’s economy. Along with the growth of clean energy, it could bring an excess of $3 billion in returns to the region over ten years. Pima County and the City of Tucson have been working together to bring the battery factory here for the last year.

″ It was a very competitive process. It went back several months and we’re fortunate this will be the headquarters. This will be the proving grounds for other gigafactories and this will be where home is,” Snell said.

The gigafactory will bring about 300 jobs to start. That will be scaled up to a thousand jobs as the company grows. The average salary is $65,000, which is above the average for Pima County.

“What we expect to see here is this billion dollars plus of capitol investment coming into the community. It’s going to create construction jobs in the near term and then high quality manufacturing and engineering jobs long term,” explained Kevin Burke, Deputy Director of Economic Initiatives at the City of Tucson.

The new battery facility will be located on 267 acres of land in Pima County’s Aerospace Research Campus. The City and County hope this will encourage more companies to move here. The economic spending from the employees as well as future businesses will have a long-lasting ECONOMIC effect.

“A thousand employees making good wages here are going to be buying houses. They’re going to be going grocery shopping, going out to restaurants and other cultural institutions at the base of the economy that we want to grow here,” he said.

Some concerns about water usage by the factory and the impact on the environment have been brought up, but they City and County say that they’re not expecting to have any issues in those areas. The initial factory will be built within the next 18 to 24 months.

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