By David Mildenberg for BusinessNC

State officials plan to announce a manufacturing plant today that will employ as many as 1,000 people at the Kingsboro megasite, about nine miles east of downtown Rocky Mount, according to people familiar with the matter.

Raleigh’s WRAL reported the plant will involve a $1.4 billion investment. It’s the same site where Gov. Roy Cooper announced a Triangle Tyre plant in 2017. The Chinese company pulled out of the project in 2022.

The proposed new plant involves production of sodium-ion carbide batteries, an emerging technology that is expected to reach $5 billion in annual revenue by 2032, according to Exponent, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based consulting firm.

A request for comment from the Carolinas Gateway Partnership economic development group, which promotes the region, was not immediately returned.

Sodium-ion batteries are considered more suitable for use in medium and low-speed electric vehicles, including bicycles, and large-scale energy storage, than the lithium-ion batteries that dominate the EV market.

Natron Energy opened the first U.S. sodium-ion battery plant at its Holland, Michigan headquarters earlier this year. Global market leaders include China’s CATL and Faradion, a United Kingdom-based company that is owned by India’s Reliance Industries.

In 2017, Chinese-owned Triangle Tyre announced plans for a tire-making operation at the Kingsboro site. It was expected to add at least 800 jobs and entail an investment of $580 million. At the time, Cooper said it was “the largest manufacturing investment in a rural county to date.”

But in May 2022, Triangle Tyre officially halted the project and returned the site.

The state Economic Investment Committee meets today at 3 p.m., while Cooper has alerted the press about a 4 p.m. development announcement in Tarboro, near the Kingsboro site. The committee is responsible for approving state incentives for companies pledging investment and new hiring.

The preceding opinion was written by David Mildenberg for BusinessNC and originally appeared on August 14, 2024 at BusinessNC’s website and is made available here for educational purposes only. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 106A-117 of the U.S. Copyright Law.