Asahi Kasei Corp. had the world to choose from when selecting a site for its multibillion-dollar battery separator plant. It chose Port Colborne.
The location of its facility that will employ about 1,000 people, producing battery components primarily for the automotive industry, followed six months of consideration, said N. Prasad Puttagunta, vice-president of the project expected to be completed by 2027. “As beautiful of a community that you are, there are a lot of choices for people to look at for projects,” he told an audience of about 350 local business and political representatives while delivering the keynote address at the Greater Niagara Chamber of Commerce (GNCC) economic summit at White Oaks Conference Resort and Spa in Niagara-on-the-Lake Tuesday.
He shared the “ugliness behind the scenes” about how the multinational corporation chose Niagara for its plant, as well as improvements needed to make the region more attractive for other large investments. “If we leave here today and we don’t have some ideas of things we can do that improve on what we already do ..
. we’re not going to win the next big projects,” he said. He said the facility in Port Colborne “is one of the largest grassroots-built projects that Asahi Kasei has taken on.
” It’s an investment of more than $1.7 billion for just the first phase. The total cost will be roughly $5 billion, he said.
Puttagunta called it “a huge project” for a Tokyo-based company that does $20 billion a .
