GM battery plant in New Carlisle ahead of schedule, officials say
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St. Joseph County officials say construction on the General Motors-Samsung SDI electric vehicle battery plant in New Carlisle is moving ahead of schedule.
Our partners at WSBT-TV report motorists driving along State Road 2 can see structures now being erected on the 656-acre site at the Indiana Enterprise Center.
Work on the 2.5 million-square-foot facility began in early 2024. When fully operational, the plant is expected to employ about 1,700 people.
St. Joseph County Director of Economic Development Bill Schalliol says the project is now really moving forward.
“Within the last week or so, we’ve really started to see a lot of the steel get erected on site,” Schalliol told WSBT. “That steel is gonna lead to more steel and more trucks coming in with product. We would imagine that over the course of the summer, you’re really gonna see the building take shape.”
Schalliol noted that there is some concern about having enough construction workers for both the GM project, as well as the nearby Amazon Web Services data center project that is also under construction.
“Between the GM site and the AWS site on either side, we’re looking at probably 3,500 to 4,000 construction employees that on site, and there’s a lot of other projects happening in the community,” he said. “So just making sure we get enough workers to work on the projects.”
The county is also expecting the housing market to rise over the next few years due to the influx of workers at both the GM and Amazon facilities.
A regional housing study found that all of St. Joseph County would need to add over 28,000 units over the next decade to meet the demand.
Construction on the GM-Samsung SDI building is expected to be complete in 2026, with production beginning in 2027.
READ MORE: Housing key to sustained economic growth for St. Joseph County