Magna spending $790 million on new plants in Tenn. to supply Ford

Diversified parts supplier Magna International Inc. said July 20 it will spend $790 million to build three new factories in Tennessee to provide Ford Motor Co. with components for its upcoming electric pickup production there.

Two of the factories will be built at BlueOval City, Ford's 3,600-acre manufacturing complex in Stanton, Tenn., where the auto maker will build next-generation electric pickups and EV battery cells. The complex includes a supplier park, and Magna said its plants there will be the largest supplier factories on site.

Aurora, Ontario-based Magna, North America's largest auto supplier, said it will build EV battery enclosures, vehicle frames and complete seats at the factories starting in 2025. The plants are expected to employ up to 1,300 people, the company said.

The largest of Magna's new factories will be an 800,000-square-foot plant that produces battery enclosures. In an email to Automotive News, the company said it "could employ up to 750 employees" at the site as production ramps up.

Magna's project is the latest example of a major supplier altering its manufacturing footprint with an eye toward winning EV-related business as the industry's electrification push continues.

This is the third significant investment Magna has made in its battery enclosure manufacturing footprint in the past year. In that time, the company also committed about $700 million to build or expand battery enclosure plants in Michigan and Ontario, the latter of which supplies Ford for F-150 Lightning production.

Battery enclosures are a significant "target area" for Magna as it positions itself for EV production in the coming years, said Eric Wilds, the supplier's chief sales and marketing officer. Enclosures, which house high-voltage batteries and other EV components, are a "natural progression" for Magna, which has extensive experience building frames and underbody components for gasoline-powered vehicles, he said.

"They're very complex, especially when considering they need to be leak-proof," he said in an interview with Automotive News a sister publication of Plastics News."It's not as simple as building a big box and welding it together. The complexity is something that makes it a great target area for us and makes it somewhat difficult to the point where not just anyone else can do it."

Magna's other BlueOval City plant will be 140,000 square feet in size and produce polyurethane foam and assemble complete seats for just-in-time delivery. That plant will employ about 300 people, the company said.

For the third part of the project, the Aurora, Ontario, supplier intends to build a 400,000-square-foot factory in Lawrenceburg, Tenn., about 80 miles south of Nashville and 140 miles east of BlueOval City. The factory will produce vehicle frames and is expected to employ about 250 people.

All the components built at the three factories will support production of electric trucks at BlueOval City. The truck will be built on Ford's dedicated battery platform but will be a separate model from the F-150 Lightning, Ford CEO Jim Farley told reporters last year.

Ford expects its new $5.6 billion, 4-million-square foot assembly plant to have annual capacity of about 500,000 vehicles when it comes online in 2025.

In addition to the parts Magna will build at its new Tennessee factories, it also will supply outside mirrors and vehicle exterior components for Ford's upcoming electric pickup. Those components will be built at existing Magna facilities, Wilds said.

Magna ranks No. 4 on the Automotive News list of the world's largest suppliers, with annual parts sales to auto makers of $37.8 billion in 2022. It is No. 43 in Plastics News' ranking of North American injection molders with $245 million in sales in the region.