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The parade of suppliers for the Hyundai Meta Plant near Savannah continues, progressively sprinkling benefits around to the communities that partnered together to win the initial $5.5 billion investment.
Seoyon E-Hwa announced that it would spend $76 million to develop a new factory in Chatham County, the first supplier to land in the county encompassing the city of Savannah. Chatham borders Bryan County, where the new meta plant will be built.
Both counties were among the four that partnered to create a joint development authority to help market the 2,900-acre, state-owned mega-site in Ellabell that eventually wooed Hyundai’s first U.S. electric-vehicle plant.
Production at the Seoyon plant, which will create 500 jobs, is set to begin in October 2024. Counting indirect jobs — those created downstream by spending on the plant’s construction and operation — the state estimates that it will lead to employment for more than 740 Georgians.
Seoyon E-Hwa makes door trim, headlining, seats, bumpers and other automotive parts through its factory network that includes locations in North America, India and Europe along with South Korea.
Seoyon was formed in 2014 in a spinoff from Hanil E-hwa, an auto parts company founded in 1972. That firm set up a facility in Troup County back in 2010 that is still in operation today as Seoyon E-hwa Georgia, which supplies the Kia plant in West Point.
In building a Chatham County facility on the other side of Georgia, Seoyon will nearly double its workforce in the state, offering more evidence that the seeds of Korean investment serving Kia, Georgia’s first OEM car maker, continue to sprout new job growth more than a decade after it started operations.
Operating as Hanil, Seoyon first invested $8 million in a factory that employed 173 in Georgia, then invested $5.5 million more in a 2014 expansion that it said at the time would create 80 more jobs. Now, the operation in West Point has grown to 630 people that Seoyon expects to retain even as it opens the new facility.
Learn more about the company at its website here or watch its corporate video (in English) below:
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