AJIN Georgia will hold an invitation-only opening ceremony Thursday at its Bulloch County plant in the Bruce Yawn Commerce Park.

AJIN's factory will manufacture stamped-metal parts that comprise much of the framework of passenger vehicles as a supplier to the Hyundai Motor Group's Metaplant now under construction in Ellabell. Hyundai said in June it would begin production at the Metaplant of the 2025 IONIQ 5, an all-electric SUV, in the fourth quarter of 2024.

AJIN announced in November 2022 that it would build the factory on the 83-acre site behind the TA Travel Center at the Interstate-16 interchange. The company has committed to creating more than 600 jobs in the coming years, with a $317 million investment. The projected cost of building and equipping the 853,000-square-foot plant is $278 million.

AJIN USA operates a similar plant that has been in production at Cusseta, Alabama since 2009. Like the Alabama plant, AJIN said the Bulloch factory would use machines such as blanking presses, stamping presses and die cutters in the manufacturing process. Also, parts-handling robots would be used at almost all of the work stations at the Bulloch plant.

Along with AJIN, two other tier-one suppliers to the Metaplant are building plants in Bulloch County. Hanon Systems is a maker of "automotive thermal and energy management" equipment, which includes air-conditioning components and Ecoplastic America Corporation, will manufacture injection-molded plastic automotive body parts for Hyundai Motor Group vehicles.

Those factories are expected to come online soon, too.

AJIN, Hanon, and Ecoplastic are all tier-one suppliers because they deal directly with Hyundai Motor Group. 

Hyundai broke ground on the 2,541-acre Bryan County site in October 2022. Currently under construction just south of I-16 East near Blitchton, the Metaplant complex is now projected to employ, eventually, 8,500 people on-site.