Kansas Panasonic plant construction, hiring set for busy 2024

DE SOTO, Kan. -- Roughly a year after Panasonic officially broke ground on its $4 billion electric vehicle battery plant in De Soto, Kansas, construction crews still have more than a year of work to go before the targeted opening in the first quarter of 2025.

But, Panasonic officials say the senior leadership team is in place, 34 engineers have already been hired and are training at the company's Gigafactory plant near Reno, Nevada to help set up and open the De Soto facility.

The workers who will be on the line on day one are expected to be hired in January and February, and spend much of 2024 training up to be ready to run the Kansas facility.

"Anyone wanting to be a part of advanced manufacturing, we'll have opportunities at all levels," said Panasonic Vice President of Human Resources Kristen Walters.

That's why she says the company is already working closely with local community colleges and four-year institutions to mold degree and certification programs to teach the skills Panasonic will need.

Those programs will allow entry-level workers to advance through the ranks, helping prolong a career in manufacturing either within Panasonic or at one of the region's other manufacturing businesses.

The goal is to spread those programs around the region to help draw workers that already live in the metro, around 50 miles around the plant.

"We'll want people from all surrounding areas that want to be a part of what we're doing to have that opportunity," Walters said.

Eventually, those workers will clock in at the more than three million square foot facility that's being built right now. About 86% of the first wing's exterior is up with exterior paneling already being installed. That part of the building will start creating EV batteries in early 2025 while the second wing is completed.

"We have a lot of utilities and facilities around us that we can use," said Panasonic Vice President of Operations Innocent Chikunya. "To get this piece of land that's situated in a piece of land that you can access easily is incredible."

Chikunya says that helps make the manufacturing process more efficient with raw materials coming into the eastern side of the building and moving in straight line until finished batteries can be shipped out of the western side.

He says it's an improvement over the company's set up in Tesla's Gigafactory plant in Nevada.

"Reno is in Tesla's Gigafactory and it's a fixed building so we had to make equipment fit in a fixed building," Chikunya said.

Outside the facility, Panasonic has a development agreement with the City of De Soto, laying out how incentives to draw the company will lead to benefits for the local community.

Commitments to local school districts have already created events like STEM Fest where local students were able to learn more about STEM subjects from Panasonic and NASA employees.

"We're investing four billion dollars into a plant, we're going to be here for generations," said Community Affairs Manager Julie Sailors.

It's the company's attempt to avoid the challenges FOX4 found when we went to Reno, Nevada to study the impact a similar facility had there.

The Tesla Gigafactory brought in a huge amount of workers over a short time, making the cost of living skyrocket while depleting the housing supply.

City leaders tell FOX4 they're already working on solutions that would mitigate a similar impact in western Johnson County. Other factors like easier access to land that can be developed in Kansas compared to Nevada could help too.

Sailors says her team's work will also help because Panasonic controls its facility in Kansas in a way it doesn't in Nevada, because the Gigafactory belongs to Tesla.

"We're leasing space from our customer [in Nevada] so we didn't have a lot of input on the front end so being able to design this from the beginning and really have input and partner with the communities from the beginning is very different," Sailors said.

Panasonic said the large electric substation being built next to the facility to power it is not going to create any rate increases. The company says it's still negotiating its rates with Evergy, but that it's committed to "paying its fair share."

Production is expected to start in early 2025.