Ontario EV battery separator plant will employ small number of ‘short-term’ foreign workers, officials say

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A new electric-vehicle battery separator plant being built by Japan’s Asahi Kasei Corp. in Port Colborne, Ont., will employ a small number of foreign workers over the short term, who will train local employees to produce the technology that has not yet been introduced in North America, government officials say.

The company, alongside Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Doug Ford, on Tuesday formally announced the Niagara Region location for a new $1.6-billion plant, part of Honda Motor Co.’s previously announced $15-billion investment in Ontario’s electric-vehicle supply chain.

Company officials said talks with Ontario are continuing and a final agreement has yet to be signed. Neither government officials nor company representatives were able to say how many permanent jobs would be created.

The issue of foreign workers at EV plants has been a sore spot for governments. Union leaders have complained that the Stellantis-LG STLA-N joint venture that is building an EV battery plant in Windsor, Ont., was bringing in 900 South Korean and Japanese temporary workers to set up the new plant.

Ontario Economic Development Minister Vic Fedeli, who attended the announcement, told The Globe and Mail Tuesday that the company will bring in “short-term” technical employees to help assemble equipment and to train workers, before returning home to Japan. He said there is no expertise for building the separators yet in Canada.

“Nobody in Canada has ever done this. You can’t just be awarded a $1.6-billion plant and expect to build it and make a product. There’s a lot of technical training to be done,” he said.

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He said the number of workers will be revealed in the near future. Federal Conservative Party spokesperson Sam Lilly said Canadian taxpayers and workers have nothing to be happy about and the deal does not guarantee Canadian jobs.

Asahi Kasei will make separators, which are made of polymeric materials and go between EV batteries’ anodes and cathodes, in Port Colborne. Another company, South Korea’s Posco Future M Co. Ltd., will produce cathodes, at a yet-to-be-specified location in the province.

Asahi will receive federal support, expected to be in the low hundreds of millions of dollars, through clean technology manufacturing investment tax credits, as well as unspecified “direct and indirect incentives” from the Ontario government. The plant is expected to be completed by 2024 and start production by 2027.

The federal tax credits are part of the approximately $2.5-billion in federal subsidies announced for Honda’s HMC-N EV-making plans in Ontario. The company will also receive financial support from Mr. Ford’s provincial government, which is offering up to $2.5-billion for the series of Honda investments.

Mr. Fedeli said the province’s direct and indirect investment in the plant will be on par with other investments it has made in the EV sector. He said details are not being revealed because the province is still engaged in “extremely sensitive” talks with other companies, and the window on EV investment is closing.

“For us, to be frank, less said is better, today. But all will be disclosed when the time is right,” he said.

Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said Canadian workers remain a priority.

“Our job is to maximize the opportunities for Canadians, whether it’s Canadian workers, Canadian construction workers, but also the whole supply chain, because you’re looking at generational investments that are going to create tens of thousands of jobs over the lifetime of the plant,” he said at the press conference.

Port Colborne Mayor Bill Steele said his city was chosen as the plant’s location for its proximity to water, rail and highways, as well as to the U.S. cities of Buffalo and Detroit, and ability to ship across North America.

He said he expects there will be “very few” Japanese workers and that 99 per cent of the work force will be local, similar to other international companies that have set up shop in Canada.

“What we know is the majority of workers will be local workers for this plant, which is big,” he said after the announcement.

Koshiro Kudo, Asahi Kasei president, said his company has been planning to build separator plants in foreign countries for about two to three years. He said the company first considered Europe, then the United States. “Frankly speaking, Canada was our third country to investigate opportunities for investment,” he said through a translator.

“Little by little we have learned that there is a huge enthusiasm coming from the federal government, provincial government and the local municipal government. And also we have found that there are plenty of great-quality human resources available here,” he said.