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UPDATED: 10:42 p.m. March 12, 2006 State scores Kia plant
By WALTER WOODS The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 03/13/06 Kia Motors Corp. will build its first U.S. auto assembly plant in Georgia, selecting the Troup County town of West Point, the company announced Sunday.
Gov. Sonny Perdue flew to South Korea this weekend and signed a deal with Kia officials in Seoul late Sunday.
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Kia will have a groundbreaking in April and start building the factory during the second half of the year. The plant will open by 2009.
Kia is building the plant, which will produce 300,000 vehicles a year, to meet growing demand in the United States and Canada, where it expects to sell 800,000 units by 2010. Kia's Georgia plant will make passenger cars and either SUVs or minivans.
The plant will create 2,500 jobs, the company said. The company also said another five or six supplier companies surrounding the factory would hire 2,000 more people.
The Kia deal means more than just paychecks. Georgia now joins the club of Southern states enjoying the investment and prestige that foreign automakers like BMW, Hyundai and Nissan have brought to the region over the past 15 years.
Georgia has been frustrated in its efforts to lure an overseas automaker. The state tried and failed twice to bring DaimlerChrysler to Pooler.
The announcement also means a change in Georgia's luck. In less than a year, Georgia has lost both of its auto plants, its major military installations, and corporate pillars BellSouth and Georgia-Pacific, both through mergers.
Kia's news also is an election year bonus for Perdue, who can tout the successful negotiations to voters in November.
"We are very excited about this day. We understand it's a big day for Georgia, and it's a big day for Kia Motors," Perdue said. "We look forward to the relationship =E2=80" that we believe will be long-standing and mutually beneficial and profitable for Kia Motors and the state of Georgia."
Kia is a boon for West Point, which has been hit hard by the demise of the local textile industry. Donald Gilliam, West Point's vice mayor, called the announcement "beautiful."
"This will be a boost that's sorely needed," he said.
But the price to lure Kia here is high.
Georgia has offered Kia an incentive package worth $410 million, or $164,000 per job, said Michael Choo, a Kia spokesman in Seoul.
That's more incentives than other Southern states have offered overseas automakers, including the $320 million =E2=80" $96,000 per job =E2=80" that former Gov. Roy Barnes offered DaimlerChrysler in 2002, a deal Perdue's administration criticized as too generous.
Kia's announcement came from South Korea after Perdue spoke Sunday evening via conference call with the State Properties Commission. The commission met in executive session in the governor's office to authorize the state's purchase of a 2,200-acre site for the Kia plant along I-85.
The state will buy the Kia site from more than 30 property owners for $35.7 million, said Cathy Cox, Georgia's secretary of state and a member of the commission. The state eventually will sell the site to Kia for about $2 million, Cox said.
The incentive deal includes construction of a $20 million technical school at the site for training workers, a $6 million rail spur, and improvements to the West Point interchange on I-85, Cox said.
Kia chose West Point because it's close to a new Hyundai Motor Co. plant in Montgomery and the area has a suitable work force for the facility, Choo said. Hyundai is Kia's parent company.
Kia also liked the visibility on I-85 and that West Point is roughly midway between Atlanta and Montgomery, West Point leaders said Friday.
A Kia official driving from Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport to the Montgomery Hyundai plant discovered the West Point site, town officials said.
Kia's search for its first U.S. plant started in Mississippi, Choo said. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said last summer that Kia was seriously considering Meridian, Miss.
But by fall Kia had started looking elsewhere; formal negotiations with Georgia started in November.
The Georgia plant is part of Kia's strategy to expand its global operations, Choo said. The company's second factory in China is under construction, and its first European facility will open in Slovakia in December.
Kia's announcement Sunday came as a $1 billion offer from Columbus, Miss., to bring Kia to the Magnolia State appeared to have been a pig in a poke.
The Mississippi Development Authority said in a statement late Friday that a local official in Columbus who had promoted the $1 billion incentive did not have the authority to make such promises to the company.
Mississippi's $1 billion incentive was one of the last worries for Georgia officials trying to land the plant.
Staff writer Craig Simons in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this article.