Source: The Standard
Excavators, bulldozers and articulated haulers dot 81 hectares of land in north Port Colborne, as they prepare the future site of Asahi Kasei Corp.’s $1.56-billion, 185,800-square-metre lithium-ion separator battery plant.
The machinery is constantly on the move, operating seven days a week, 12 hours a day, as St. Catharines-based Rankin Construction clears the land near the border of Welland on the west side of Highway 140 between Kleinsmith Road and north to Canadian Pacific rail lines.
Port Colborne Mayor Bill Steele said he is elated to see work underway on the largest investment, announced in May, made in the city.
It’s also the largest investment related to the electric vehicle (EV) industry to date in Niagara.
“They (Asahi Kasei Corp.) want the land cleared and ready for building by the end of August. We (the city) gave them permission to work longer periods to get that done. Once the announcement was made, we wanted to get the shovels in the ground as soon as possible,” Steele said in an interview this week.
Headquartered in Tokyo, worldwide Asahi Kasei Corp., more than 100 years old with a solid reputation worldwide, wants its first products off the line by 2027, and the groundwork completed at the site before bad weather sets in, Steele said.
“The company has been fantastic to work with since the whole process started.”
Asahi Kasei’s Port Colborne facility will be the first Hipore wet-process operation outside of Japan and the company’s largest greenfield plant to date. In the process, a microporous polyolefin sheet prevents anodes and cathodes from contacting one another and causing a short-circuit, and while enabling lithium ions to pass back and forth during battery charging and discharging.
“There are myriad uses for their product. They are the premier company to make electric battery separators,” said Steele.
The company has a basic agreement with Honda Motor Co. Ltd., which announced this year it is building an EV battery plant next to its Alliston, Ont. assembly plant.
The number of people to be employed at the completed Port Colborne plant was not revealed in May, and details about direct jobs will be announced later.
Steele said there will be at least 500 construction jobs to start at the plant, which will be built in three phases.
At the time, he said every one of these jobs creates five outside jobs, equating to thousands of jobs, not just at the plant but across Port Colborne, Niagara and Ontario.
Steele said Mississauga-based construction company EllisDon — it works across multiple sectors and is building the new south Niagara hospital in Niagara Falls — is the general contractor.
With work underway, the mayor said Asahi Kasei reached out to area residents about the construction.
There is one home on Kleinsmith Road, at the entrance to the job site, and a few directly north in Welland on Netherby Road.
Steele said one complaint about dust from the site was raised and Rankin worked quickly to mitigate the issue. He added residents can contact Port Colborne City Hall if dust continues to be an issue.
Asahi Kasei spoke with Ward 4 Couns. Monique Aquilina and Ron Bonder, and plans an open house, with city planners on hand, for residents near the facility.
“There will be an open house for the entire city as well,” said Steele.
Dates for both will be announced.
As the facility is built, so, too, will a new road to it, the mayor said.
“They won’t be using Kleinsmith. It’s too close to the bottom of the (Highway 140) overpass. There was an industrial road agreed to years ago by Nyon Oil.”
Nyon proposed using the property as a 56-tank petrochemical farm for diesel, petrol and oil, placing a pipeline to the Welland Canal for vessels, with secondary transport through rail about once a day, followed by trucks as a third transport option.
Steele said a traffic study will look at the proposed road, north of Kleinsmith, and Highway 140 and determine whether new turning lanes are needed.
The property was last owned by BMI Group, which operates Thorold Multimodal Hub with Hamilton-Oshawa Port Authority and Niagara Ports, which stretches from Thorold to Port Colborne along the canal.
BMI sold 81 of 162 hectares to Asahi Kasei for an undisclosed price and was waiting to see if any of the company’s suppliers required land to be closer to its facility on the remaining land.
The property, zoned as heavy industrial, was also subject to a minister’s zoning order (MZO), which regulates the use of land and the erection, location and use of any building or structure on it.
The MZO would permit the manufacturing facility, parking lots, stormwater management ponds, private electric substations, a private wastewater treatment plant and tank yards.
In an earlier interview, Steele said there was a simple explanation for the MZO.
He said Port Colborne’s urban boundary stops at Third Concession, and from Third to the Asahi Kasei property is considered rural, and the city was not allowed to run water and sewer lines through a rural area.
The order would allow that to happen.