One of the first lithium-ion battery manufacturing facilities wholly owned by a U.S. company is coming to Arizona, as Kore Power selected Maricopa County as the location of its new battery cell production facility.
The one-million-square-foot manufacturing facility, dubbed the KOREPlex, will support up to 12 gigawatt hours (GWh) of battery cell production to help ensure a reliable and independent U.S. supply chain for lithium-ion battery cells. The facility will have the capacity to produce enough power for 3.2 million homes each year. KORE plans to start construction of the facility by the end of the year with the goal of beginning production in Q2 2023. Construction is planned to take about 18 months.
The company’s current annual production capacity of 2 GWh is in the process of scaling up to 6 GWh.
KOREPlex will employ more than 3,000 full-time personnel at the facility. The construction of KOREPlex will employ an estimated 3,400 workers during peak construction.
Once complete, KOREPlex will operate with net-zero carbon emissions through strategic partnerships and solar-plus- and storage co-generation.
The company said the Maricopa County location was chosen after a national site search and evaluation of the energy storage, manufacturing, and electric transportation opportunities across the country. Arizona is seen as advantageous due to site proximity to complimentary industries such as e-mobility, solar, semiconductor, and utilities, workforce and logistics capacity, and a pro-business tax and regulatory environment.
The facility will be located in Buckeye, a suburb west of Phoenix.
