Agreement reached to keep Stellantis-LG’s electric vehicle battery plant in Windsor, Ontario.
Stellantis and LG Energy Solution have reached an agreement to continue construction of the NextStar battery plant in Windsor, the company confirmed Wednesday.
Construction has resumed, the company said in a statement on Wednesday evening. The exact breakdown of the deal, and how much it’s worth, is still unknown.
“We are pleased that the federal government came back with the support of the provincial government and delivered on their commitment to level the playing field with the [Inflation Reduction Act]said Mark Stewart, Stellantis Chief Operating Officer North America.
It’s been more than seven weeks since we learned that the future of the electric vehicle (EV) battery plant being built in Windsor, Ontario, was in jeopardy. Stellantis says NextStar Energy is Canada’s first large-scale EV battery factory.
In early June, Stellantis and the federal government confirmed that the automaker and LG Energy Solution had received an offer from Ottawa, and their finance and legal teams were considering it.
With a deal between Stellantis and higher levels of government over Windsor’s EV battery plant still in the air, CBC Windsor News at 6 host Katerina Georgieva takes a look back at the recent history of the Windsor automaker – and the flow of taxpayers’ money into the company.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the offer is “respectful to taxpayers” and would create “great jobs” for generations to come to secure a future in southern Ontario communities.
In May, Stellantis said it was moving to “contingency plans” because the federal government failed to honor its agreement. That’s when the automaker halted most of the construction On the website.
On May 31, the Toronto Star first reported that a tentative deal had been reached.
Canada’s financial package with another automaker, Volkswagen, which plans to open a massive plant in St. Thomas, Ontario, could be linked to the standoff, industry experts say, as well as new US legislation that could open up unprecedented stimulus offers to companies. makes – something that Canada has a hard time matching.
Premier Doug Ford said Ontario would cover a third of the cost of a deal and he didn’t believe giving more to Stellantis would set a bad negotiating precedent for the province.
South Korean battery maker LG Energy Solution and Stellantis announced the $5 billion project last year, saying it was expected to create 2,500 jobs and open sometime in 2024.
In a press release, Stewart said the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, which added incentives for companies to establish EV factories south of the border, “changed the battery manufacturing landscape in North America, making it challenging to find competitively priced, state-of-the-art the-art batteries in Canada without an equivalent level of government support.”
Dong-Myung Kim, president and head of LG Energy Solution’s Advanced Automotive Battery Division, called Wednesday “a good day not only for our joint venture but also for Canada.”
Unifor, which represents many car workers in Windsor, says the deal will preserve jobs.
“We knew the stakes were high,” Lana Payne, national president of Unifor, said in a statement. “We knew these commitments had to be kept because the alternative would have been unthinkable for so many workers.
“I know that what appealed to all sides was our union’s persistent message that the livelihoods of thousands upon thousands of workers were at stake during this dispute.”
When automaker Stellantis announced it would halt construction of an EV battery plant in Ontario, a dispute with the federal government came to light. Ottawa promised big tax breaks for the factory, but a few months after the deal was signed, a US law came into effect that changed everything. About That’s Lauren Bird explains how unprecedented investment south of the border led to the shutdown of Stellantis.
More to come
