Battle Creek Welcomes Green Technology Materials Manufacturer

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Toda America Incorporated (Schaumburg, Illinois) has received $35 million from the U.S. Department of Energy's Electric Device Vehicle Battery and Component Manufacturing Initiative for the construction of a plant. The plant will produce specialty metal-oxide cathode material to be used by another manufacturer in the construction of high-efficiency, long-life lithium ion batteries, which will power "green technology" automobiles.

After months of competition between Goose Creek, South Carolina, and Battle Creek, Michigan, Toda America, which is a subsidiary of Japan's Toda Kogyo Corporation, announced the intention to build a cathode materials production plant in the Battle Creek area.

After Toda America hired consulting firm Turtlerock Greentech (Ann Arbor, Michigan) in the summer of 2009, momentum began to favor Toda locating to Battle Creek. The Michigan Economic Development Corporation encouraged Toda to choose the Battle Creek site, with lucrative tax deferrals and an agreement that included complete remediation of the brownfield site at the expense of the city's economic development firm prior to commencement of construction of the new plant.

The recently completed site remediation project was managed by the Kalamazoo branch office of Soil and Material Engineers (Plymouth, Michigan). The actual remediation was accomplished by Peters Construction Company (Kalamazoo, Michigan).

Hazama Corporation's North America division (Worthington, Ohio) has been contracted by the owner, Toda, to design and build the two phases that make up this $70 million project. The first phase will include infrastructure and underground utilities, and an approximately 60,000-square-foot building that will house a 2,000-ton-per-year specialty metal-oxide production unit. The construction of the second phase, which will closely follow the completion of the first phase, is to include another approximately 60,000-square-foot building, with an additional 2,000 ton-per-year specialty metal oxide unit, to bring the total plant capacity to 4,000 tons per year.

Toda hopes to begin production operations at the first new unit by the end of March 2012. If everything goes as planned, construction on the second new unit should begin as early as April 2012 and be completed in or before the first quarter of 2013.

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