About 285 invited guests – including many South Koreans and well as Americans – attended the grand opening celebration luncheon Thursday at AJIN Georgia’s automotive metal structural parts factory in Bulloch County’s Bruce Yawn Commerce Park.
Many hundreds of robots and a few hundred employees inside the 853,000-square foot facility have been making parts for the Ioniq 5, an all-electric Hyundai Motor Group crossover SUV, on a trial basis for about a month. Those parts include the main metal portions of a vehicle’s doors, dash, fenders, and floorboard.
After lunch, many of Thursday’s celebration guests took tours of the plant, getting a look at what a $317-million corporate investment with a Register, Georgia address looks like. When production begins in earnest, tractor-trailer trucks will haul parts from the AJIN plant to Hyundai Motor Group’s Metaplant America, in northern Bryan County about 29 miles down Interstate 16.
Hyundai said in June it would begin production at the Metaplant with the 2025 IONIQ 5 in the fourth quarter of 2024. But so far, with no market-ready assembly of vehicles yet underway at the Metaplant, what the AJIN plant has undertaken is “control production” of parts used for calibration and testing, said its Human Resources General Manager Jamie Calloway.
“Hyundai as they’re going through doing their calibrations and putting everything together, we send them parts; they put them together,” he said. “We build a lot of stuff here, and we destroy it for testing purposes and certification purposes.”
Guests who took the tour saw hundreds of one-armed robots, ranging from a couple of feet tall to 20 feet or more – many blue, others yellow, a few big orange ones – swiveling, flexing, lifting and lowering in the robotic sub-assembly and welding areas, and also massive stamping presses that exert up to 1,500 tons of force and the rolls of steel that feed them.
But there were also some cavernous empty areas remaining in the plant, with just safety lines painted on the floor and some bases for equipment yet to be installed. Soon these areas will be filled with equipment for production of a second vehicle line, said Calloway, who called that second vehicle simply “the SUV.”
200 now, 350 by year-end
AJIN Georgia already employs about 200 people and plans to hire more in August and September with about 350 on the job by the end of the year, he said. That will be on the way to the plant’s eventual full-capacity employment of about 630 people that was predicted in the late-November 2022 plant announcement.
That is far fewer than the 8,500 jobs expected to be created eventually on-site at the Metaplant. But AJIN is the first tier-one supplier to get up and running. “Tier-one” means that it sends parts directly to the Metaplant. Supplier plants in a number of counties, along with a battery factory also at the Bryan County Mega Site, should boost the total number of jobs associated with the Metaplant to more than 15,000 over the next few years, according to state officials.
Two other tier-one suppliers are building plants in Bulloch County, and these are also expected to be completed soon. 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.
CEO’s priorities
AJIN USA Chief Executive Officer Jungho Sea, welcoming the guests in Korean while another AJIN staff member translated his remarks to English, said: “As long as I continue operating my humble organization and factory here, I will always take the local community into my considerations. I will always take my employees as my top priority, as well.”
From the local community, guests included, of course, Bulloch County commissioners and staff, officials of Statesboro’s city government, state officials and representatives of the Development Authority of Bulloch County, the Statesboro-Bulloch Chamber of Commerce and media organizations.
Some of the Koreans who attended were AJIN executives and plant employees in specialized roles, such as technicians and electricians. AJIN USA already has two plants in Alabama, including one that makes the same kinds of parts now to be made at the Register plant.
The Republic of Korea’s Consul General Sangpyo Suh from the Atlanta Consulate also attended and spoke during the ceremony.
“Congratulations on a very successful site selection,” Suh said in a remark directed to Sea and the other AJIN corporate officials, after noting the plant’s proximity to the interstate highway and thus a direct path to the Metaplant.
Billy Allen, chair of the Development Authority of Bulloch County, thanked the DABC staff, the county commissioners and all who “worked so hard to make this (commerce) park presentable so that it would attract great, outstanding companies such as AJIN Georgia” and congratulated the company on “a gorgeous building.”
A little later, Sea and the Development Authority’s CEO Benjy Thompson took part in an exchange of plaques, AJIN and the DABC each expressing continuing appreciation to the other.
Korea’s Georgia investment
Sydne Smith, chief operating officer of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, noted that next year the state will celebrate the 40th anniversary of its trade office in South Korea and reported that “for the last three years Korea has been the top international source of investment for our state.”
Georgia District 4 State Sen. Billy Hickman, R-Statesboro, cited a recent Georgia Southern University study that valued the annual economic impact of manufacturing in Bulloch County at $1.17 billion. A certified public accountant, he said he appreciated this number but might argue with the multiplier the economists used, thinking it should actually be higher.
“This is economic activity that helps other businesses in the community be successful, helps employ thousands of our citizens and enhances our quality of life,” Hickman said.
Georgia Southern, Ogeechee Technical College, the Bulloch County Schools and some neighboring school systems were represented by their top officials at the celebration luncheon. Sizeable groups of students from schools much further away, Seoul National University and Daegu High School, both in South Korea, also attended.
A group of educators from the Bulloch County, Candler County and Evans County school systems who took part in a 12-day visit to South Korea in June as part of the company’s “Korean Corner” program gathered around Sea to publicly thank him for the opportunity.
They had visited schools and cultural sites, as well as AJIN worksites, “So as we begin to have new Korean neighbors in our community we can have a greater understanding of their culture, as well as when our community members begin to work in Korean-owned businesses, we can understand how their culture impacts how their businesses operate,” said Bethany Gilliam, CTAE (career, technical and agricultural education) director for the Bulloch County Schools.
