GROVE, Okla. (AP) - Grove Battery Manufacturing LLC will hire 40 workers this year in the Grand Lake community.
It expects to employ 10 times that many in a few years, President Benny E. Jay told The Journal Record (https://bit.ly/14i8o47).
It is a positive sign for economic development, said Bill Keefer, Grove city manager.
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“We are excited that the doors are back open and they are hiring,” Keefer said.
It has been a busy six months, Jay said.
“We expect to announce resumption of Grove Battery plant operations under new ownership later this month,” Jay said.
The Oklahoma Department of Commerce said in a statement that the Grove Battery facility will add 423 jobs as part of the 10-year contract with the state’s Quality Jobs Program.
“It will happen a little faster than that,” Jay said. “We are taking over operations from the previous owner and reaching out to their former employees. They had excellent people, and we will begin hiring this month on a permanent basis.”
The former plant operator, Xtreme Power, opened in 2008 and employed a peak number of 108 people, according to published reports.
Low demand forced the company to announce the plant’s closure in November 2012. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in January 2014, Jay said.
Bankruptcy negotiations took about six months. During the last half of 2014, Grove Battery officials began preparing the 100,000-square-foot facility, Jay said.
“We spent half of last year bringing consultants into the shop, turning on equipment to see what would work, what had to be refurbished, what had to be replaced,” Jay said. “It has been a busy time trying to get the factory ready to start operations.”
Grove Battery has a backlog of orders, although Jay declined to give details.
The company will use an advanced version of the standard lead-acid chemistry in making its batteries, Jay said. The batteries are bipolar, which means they provide power more efficiently and with less heat than a typical lead-acid product, Jay said.
The plant will produce a battery capable of holding 1 kilowatt of electricity. The Grove facility has the capacity to make 100,000 batteries annually.
“Our conservative projection is that we should do half of that amount,” Jay said, referring to startup production.
Besides building battery storage for the utility industry, Grove Battery officials are eyeing the possibility of producing batteries for the trucking sector.
It is good news for the Delaware County community, said Lisa Friden, president of the Grove Area Chamber of Commerce.
“Anytime we can add jobs and get that facility back up and started is great,” Friden said.
The population of Grove is about 6,500, Keefer said. Yet there are another 10,000 to 15,000 living in the rural areas surrounding the city, Keefer said.
“That 6,500 number is deceiving, as these other people live close by, shop and do business in Grove,” Keefer said.
Grove Battery is a private investment group with about six members. The corporate office is in Ridgeland, Mississippi, Jay said.
Most companies must achieve a $2.5 million taxable payroll for one year during the first three years of the 10-year Quality Jobs Program. The program provides cash payments of up to 5 percent of new taxable payroll every three months. The maximum benefit that Grove Battery can generate is $6.8 million, according to the state Commerce Department.
Glass Master Boats erected the facility in the late 1960s or early ’70s, Keefer said. Over the past 45 years the building has been owned or leased by Glass Master Boats, JA Compressors, Eagle Picher Batteries, Horizon Batteries and Xtreme Power.
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Information from: The Journal Record, https://www.journalrecord.com
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