Battery firm abandons plan for a $2.6 billion plant in Georgia
ATLANTA (AP) — A clean energy company is abandoning a plan to build a giant electric battery factory in Atlanta’s suburbs after it shifted to buy a solar panel plant in Texas.
Freyr Battery told officials in Newnan on Thursday that it wouldn’t build a $2.6 billion plant that was supposed to hire more than 700 people, after sending a Jan. 21 letter to the Coweta County Development Authority announcing its plans to end the project.
The factory would have built batteries to store electricity produced by renewable sources and release it later, company officials said. It would have been the second-largest battery factory worldwide when it was announced in 2023. But Freyr, a startup founded in 2018, never began construction on the 368-acre (149-hectare) site.
Freyr, which moved its corporate headquarters from Norway to Newnan in part to maximize its eligibility for the U.S. tax benefits of President Joe Biden’s climate law, said it was shifting its focus to a newly opened solar panel factory that it bought last year for $340 million from top Chinese solar panel maker Trina Solar.
“We are so grateful for the support and partnership we found in Coweta County and throughout Georgia,” Freyr spokesperson Amy Jaick wrote in a statement, “However, as noted in our December release, we are focusing at the moment on the solar module manufacturing facility in Texas.”
The Newnan Times-Herald first reported the story, saying Freyr senior vice president of business development Jason Peace met Thursday with local officials. Peace told Coweta County Development Authority board members that the decision was driven by rising interest rates, falling battery prices, a change in company leadership and a shift in its goals, authority President Sarah Jacobs wrote in an email Friday.
The Georgia Department of Economic Development said the state conveyed a $7 million grant to buy a site for Freyr in Newnan, about 35 miles (55 kilometers) southwest of Atlanta. Department spokesperson Jessica Atwell said the state and company are “working together” to ensure the money is “repaid expeditiously.” Freyr may also owe money to Coweta County.
“Georgia’s incentives process protects the Georgia taxpayer, and when a company’s plans change, that process ensures discretionary incentives are repaid,” Atwell said in a statement.
Jacobs said planning for the project made Coweta County a stronger candidate for future projects.
The company had said it planned to build battery factories in Norway and Finland but said in November that it will try to sell its European business. The company also said it was terminating its license for technology to make batteries, paying $3 million to the company it was licensed from.
Tom Einar Jensen, then the company’s CEO, told investors in August that it had grown difficult to raise money to make batteries because of a surplus of Chinese batteries being produced at lower costs. The company said it was switching its strategy into businesses that would allow it to raise cash, including solar panel manufacturing. The company saw its cash on hand fall from $253 million at the end of 2023 to $182 million on Sept. 30.
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Korean firm SK Innovation built a $2.6 billion battery plant in Commerce, northeast of Atlanta and hired 3,000 workers, but later laid off or furloughed some workers.
Hyundai Motor Group has started production at a $7.6 billion electric vehicle and battery plant near Savannah, with plans to hire 8,500 workers. Electric truck maker Rivian revived its plans to build a plant east of Atlanta after a $6.6 billion loan from the Biden administration.
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