Korean Auto Parts Company to Invest $30M in Emanuel County 

The multi-year wave of Korean investment coming in to support the Hyundai Metaplant in Savannah has yet to subside even as sleek vehicles continue to roll off the assembly line. 

But the latest $30 million Georgia win isn’t coming from a completely new entrant. 

Like many long-time Korean investors, Dongwon Autopart Technology is doubling down on the state, setting up a new facility in Emanuel County to serve Hyundai in the same way that its Meriwether County factory has supplied Kia Motors in West Point since that plant’s opening in 2009. 

Dongwon Autopart, which makes seat, door and battery frames and was the first tenant in the Meriwether Industrial Park, which has since attracted other Korean investors. At one point, its operation employed more than 300 people. Combined, Dongwon employs more than 500 across the Southeast U.S. The company entered the U.S. market in 2003. 

“We are proud to be part of growing the state’s automotive industry – then and now,” said Heather Hollstein, human resources manager at Dongwon Autopart Technology, in a release. 

Now, the company has set its sights on Swainsboro, just north of Interstate 16 and east of Dublin, where it will hire 200 people at the Hwy 297 Industrial Park. 

The facility, which local leaders called the biggest economic development project Emanuel County has seen in 30 years, is the latest to land in a small community adjacent to I-16, the corridor leading from Macon to the Hyundai Metapant and onward to Georgia’s ports. 

Georgia Department of Economic Development Commissioner Pat Wilson this week praised Toombs County for preparing the Toombs Corporate Center as a top-tier GRAD (Georgia Ready for Accelerated Development) site in anticipation of wooing such projects. 

“Projects like this do not happen by chance. Economic Development is intentional,” Mr Wilson wrote on LinkedIn. 

Toombs attracted an $11.2 million investment plan from Shinsung Petrochemical, a Hyundai supplier also augmenting an existing footprint in the South. (Shinsung set up in Alabama to serve Hyunda’s initial plant in Montgomery, Ala., back in 2010).

Emanuel is the sixth largest county in Georgia by land area and has about 22,000 residents. According to the county’s website, it has the fourth highest forestry output among the state’s 159 counties and is No. 8 for onion production among counties in Georgia.