A new electric vehicle battery plant in Wyoming, Michigan, is bringing new life to a long-vacant industrial site, reported MLive.
Construction has started on a 315,000-square-foot Benteler Automotive facility that will produce battery components for Ford’s commercial transit vans. The plant will rise on a 75-acre former General Motors property that sat unused for over a decade.
The $105 million project will create 147 new positions paying between $21.62 and $67.31 per hour plus benefits. It marks Benteler’s seventh U.S. facility and its largest single-project investment ever in America.
The plant will make parts for 160,000 electric vehicle batteries annually over at least 10 years. By focusing on commercial vehicles rather than passenger cars, Benteler sees the investment as stable and strategic.
The development will create both immediate construction jobs and long-term manufacturing positions for local residents. The project anchors a larger site transformation that will create nearly 500 jobs through three new employers, potentially attracting new families to this Grand Rapids suburb.
“This has been an eyesore in the city for a long time,” said Wyoming Mayor Kent Vanderwood. “We’ve had several tries and several attempts [to redevelop it] and nothing ever worked out. We just thought, ‘Is it ever going to happen?'”
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The company chose Michigan over Florida and South Carolina because of the region’s skilled workforce, including experienced staff at Benteler’s existing Wyoming facility.
“For us, it really was about that access to resources, to our own people. You can draw in people to build a place, but to get it successful, you need your own breed of people. So it was about the people,” said executive vice president Steve Bates.
“I’ve been on the board six years, and this is the biggest investment we’ve approved for a single project, for a single customer, ever,” said Emerson Galina, president Americas of Benteler Automotive.
“I tried to retrieve the data from the past, there was no other project of this magnitude. This is very important because this shows trust into the country, trust in the team, and trust in Ford.”
The facility will open in 2026, transforming a vacant concrete slab into an economic engine supporting clean transportation manufacturing in the American Midwest.
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