(The Center Square) – Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Tesla founder Elon Musk and other officials broke ground at Tesla’s new lithium refining facility in Robstown, outside of Corpus Christi, in Nueces County on Monday.
The battery-grade lithium hydroxide refining facility is the first of its kind to be built in North America. The site will also support other types of battery materials processing, refining and manufacturing and ancillary manufacturing operations.
The new facility is expected to generate $375 million in capital investment and bring over 400 new jobs to the region. Up to 250 will be temporary over the next two years to construct the facility. Once up and running, the plant is expected to create 162 permanent jobs with a minimum salary of $81,000.
“Texas is proud to be the home of Tesla, and I thank them for choosing Robstown for their new lithium refinery,” Abbott said. “Texas will continue to be a hub of innovation, leading the way on the future of technology. With the Port of Corpus Christi nearby and Tesla’s Gigafactory in Austin, the lithium refined here will work its way into Tesla batteries all over the world.”
Addressing a crowd of over 100, the governor congratulated economic development leaders at the state and local level for helping establish Texas as the first to house a lithium refining facility in North America.
Raw ore material will be processed “into a usable state for battery production,” Tesla states in a Comptroller Data Analysis and Transparency form filed with the Robstown Independent School District last August. Processing of the ore will “consume less hazardous reagents and create usable by-products compared to the conventional process,” it states. “The final product, battery-grade lithium hydroxide, will be packaged and shipped by truck and rail to various Tesla battery manufacturing sites supporting the necessary supply chain for large- scale and electric vehicle batteries.”
Proposed construction and development includes “supporting infrastructure and lithium refining equipment, operation buildings, laboratory for R&D and quality controls, new access roadways, parking lots, loading docks, logistics facilities, process warehouse and maintenance buildings, utility distribution improvements including underground utility piping, structural foundations, pads, supports, electrical substations, rail spur for use exclusive to this project, cooling towers, fire prevention equipment, safety equipment, stormwater management facilities, waste management facilities, and wastewater treatment infrastructure.”
At the event, Drew Baglino, Tesla senior vice president of powertrain and energy engineering, said the Coastal Bend region, a major energy production and distribution hub with skilled workers, was a factor in choosing the location.
Musk also said the facility’s environmental impact would be negligible, saying, “You could live right in the middle of the refinery and not suffer any impacts.” The facility would be using “very clean operations,” he said.
The announcement comes nearly three years after the governor welcomed Tesla to Texas after Musk announced he was building a new electric vehicle manufacturing facility, Gigafactory Texas, near Austin in Travis County.
At a recent event in Houston with business executives, Abbott said that when he first met with Musk, the Tesla founder said he wanted to open a Gigafactory in Texas after having difficulties in California because of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lockdown policies and an extensive permitting process.
Musk told him “something quite astonishing,” Abbott said. “He wanted to build a Gigafactory a mile long and wanted to have vehicles rolling off of that factory in 18 months.
“That is absolutely astonishing. This isn’t a factory where you put four walls up. It’s one of the most intricate factories in technology.”
From the groundbreaking in June 2020 to the factory’s completion in December 2021, 18 months, Abbott said, vehicles began rolling off the floor. Musk was able to build an entire Gigafactory in Texas in 18 months but in California he’d still be waiting on permits.
Musk “understands the pro-business environment that the state of Texas provides. He and others do,” Abbott said, which is why CEOs continue to rank Texas first for business every year and why Texas has become “the headquarter of headquarters.”
This year, Texas again ranked first in the country for business in a nationwide survey of CEOs by Chief Executive Magazine. It ranked first, the magazine said, because of Texas’ “combination of business-friendly policies, growing cities, a rising professional class, and a direct appeal to CEOs who aren’t happy with California continues to keep Texas at the head of the class.”
Texas also leads the U.S. with the fastest economic expansion, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Texas’ economy expanded at an annual rate of 7% – nearly triple the national GDP rate of 2.6%, with no other state coming close.
This article First appeared in the center square