November 22, 2018: East Penn Manufacturing will build a $106 million finishing and distribution centre at its site in Temple, Texas, the company announced on November 14.
The new facility will carry out the final third of the battery manufacturing process, which includes electrolyte filling, electrical formation and preparing for distribution, Exide said.
The 28,000m2 facility will be built within a 305-acre industrial park in Temple. (Temple city pictured.)
The project has been offered $1.3 million from the so-called ‘Texas Enterprise Fund’, a state organization that ‘pursues business expansion and relocation with the goal of developing job creation and export opportunities for Texas’.
East Penn said the new plant would bolster distribution operations in Texas, which was a ‘strategic location to better reach customers in the south central US and other key points across North America’.
In June 2016, Exide announced it was breaking ground on a similar facility in Oelwein, Iowa, and operations began in February this year, as BESB reported in March.
Construction of the Temple plant should begin in the third quarter of 2019.
“We are pleased that it will be in a community and state where we feel we can flourish and grow,” said CEO and president Chris Pruitt, who took over from Dan Langdon this January.
