Saft Plant Opening a Boon to Jacksonville Economy
September 16, 2011
Saft, the world’s leading designer and manufacturer of high-tech industrial batteries, inaugurated the world’s most advanced automated lithium-ion battery factory at the Cecil Commerce Center on the Jacksonville Westside.
“Having a renowned international company such as Saft choose Jacksonville is a major step in building the economy of tomorrow,” said Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown at the Friday opening. “The new plant gives us high-tech jobs to help put Jacksonville back to work and is a great example of the good that can come from the public and private sectors working together.”
The high-volume, state-of-the-art production facility will build advanced lithium-ion cells and batteries for energy storage for renewable energy, smart grid support, broadband back-up power, transportation and defense. Saft’s 16th facility worldwide is also a unique example of technical innovation, including the production of 1 MW of solar power from the largest rooftop photovoltaic system in Florida and fully-automated, totally flexible production lines capable of building multi new-generation Li-ion technologies.
With an annual sales capacity of $300 million, Saft Jacksonville will meet growing customer demand for high performance, competitive energy storage solutions and will play an important part in the development of the new-energy economy.
Saft was presented with incentives from the state of Florida and the City of Jacksonville to build the plant, and construction of the 235,000-square-foot facility was further funded by a $95.5 million federal grant from the Department of Energy under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
John Searle, Saft’s CEO declared, “I am delighted that our most advanced facility ever is now ready to serve our customers who are demanding ever higher performance energy storage solutions. Saft’s strategy is to actively address these new opportunities with our latest generation lithium-ion technology.”