One year ago Thursday, Microporous announced that it would bring $1.3 billion in investment and over 2,000 jobs to Southside Virginia.
The region has already seen ripple effects from the project even before it’s up and running, as developers for housing and other projects have taken an interest in the area, said Pittsylvania County Economic Development Director Matt Rowe.
In the past year, the Tennessee-based company, which manufactures lithium-ion battery separators for electric vehicles, has been preparing to start building its 500,000-square-foot facility in the Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill.
“Construction is imminent,” said Rowe. “The layout and design work are complete for the most part.”
When Microporous announced that it would locate at Berry Hill on Nov. 13, 2024, choosing Virginia over a site in North Carolina, it became the largest economic development project in Southside’s history.
The Berry Hill Megasite is the largest industrial park in Virginia and one of the largest in the Southeastern U.S. at 3,528 acres. Microporous will be the first tenant there.
Work to prepare the megasite for industrial use had taken over a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars in state and local investment, and has happened alongside the loss of several big prospects.
The announcement was a long-awaited win that will bring transformational economic impact to the region, said officials at the groundbreaking ceremony last year.
“Just like with any industrial park, the first tenant is always the hardest and most important one to get,” Rowe said in an interview earlier this month. “To be able to get a first tenant for an investment of over $1.3 billion and 2,000 jobs, that’s not a bad way to start.”
The start of a long-awaited project
Construction of the Microporous facility will take place on a 212-acre lot within the park. Despite the project’s size, this isn’t the largest pad at the megasite, Rowe has said. It’s actually one of the smallest: The largest graded pad is about 2,100 acres.
The plant is expected to be fully operational by early 2028, said Rowe.
In April, Microporous President Doug Rich said the project was “moving ahead” and on time after questions arose about whether an executive order might affect a $100 million federal grant slated for the project.
The money, which had been announced alongside the project in November, was to come from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Manufacturing and Recycling grant program, funded by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
In announcing the award, the Energy Department said Microporous would help secure domestic manufacturing of a market currently dominated by China.
On his first day in office, however, President Donald Trump signed an order that froze the disbursement of federal funds to some energy-related projects funded by the act.
According to a Microporous LinkedIn post in May, the federal funding did come through, and the grant award period began April 1.
There have been no other posts about the federal grant since then, but Rowe confirmed that the funding was approved.
Rowe said he’s not aware of any change in the project’s timeline. A spokesperson from Microporous did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
“Once construction starts, the average citizen will be able to see that something’s happening,” Rowe said. “Again, with a project of this size, there’s so many moving parts that have to be nailed down and it just takes time.”
Much of the preliminary work — grading land, installing infrastructure — was already complete at the site before Microporous took interest in Virginia.
The megasite, which is jointly owned by Danville and Pittsylvania County, has seen over $200 million in private and public investment since it was formed in 2008.
The land was cobbled together from properties that the city and county acquired, and hundreds of acres have been graded, developed and prepared with infrastructure in the last 16 years.
In 2023, the park received a Tier 5 designation from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, which means that there is enough graded land and infrastructure for the site to be considered shovel-ready.
The city and county also jointly undertook a connector road project to improve access to the site. The 2.4-mile road cost $33.5 million and was completed over a year and a half.
Not being shovel-ready in the past cost the site some big opportunities. But so did other factors, including politics and geography.
In May 2022, a $5.5 billion Hyundai electric vehicle battery plant went to a site in Savannah, Georgia, because it was more developed than Berry Hill.
In January 2023, Gov. Glenn Youngkin pulled the site out of consideration for a Ford Motor Co. battery plant facility due to concerns about Chinese government influence and the possibility that federal tax incentives would benefit a company with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
And in March 2023, chemical manufacturer Albemarle Corp. chose a site in Chester County, South Carolina, for a lithium plant because it was closer to the company’s main facility in Charlotte, North Carolina.
To encourage Microporous to locate at Berry Hill, the city, county and state created a package of incentives. The company became eligible for a special appropriation of up to $60.6 million approved by the General Assembly’s Major Employment and Investment Project Approval Commission.
The Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission also approved up to $25 million in low-interest financing to bring major natural gas service to the project. The Tobacco Commission has invested nearly $35 million in the megasite since 2008.
The Virginia Talent Accelerator Program will provide support for Microporous’ job creation.
This is in exchange for investments of at least $1.3 billion and the creation of 2,015 full-time jobs with a base yearly wage of about $60,000.
Transformational impact in Southside and beyond
Microporous’ decision to locate in Southside Virginia has already generated interest in the region among other developers.
Housing projects, including a 1,900-unit master planned community in Axton and the Vandola Crescent development in Danville, aim to provide workforce housing for future megasite employees.
“Success always brings success,” Rowe said. “Being able to have that first project secured for the 212 acres at the site really just creates momentum that then carries over to the rest of Southern Virginia.”
The announcement has also generated increased interest in the megasite itself, he said.
“We’re hopeful that here in the relative near future, we’ll be out there again with another large announcement,” Rowe said. “There’s a tremendous demand for domestic EV manufacturing. … We sincerely believe that we’ve tied our wagon onto the winning horse.”
At the groundbreaking ceremony announcing the project, Youngkin lauded Microporous for being “an American company, using American technology that will hire American workers and supply American companies.”
The lithium-ion battery separators that Microporous manufactures create a barrier between the positive and negative sides of a battery to prevent short circuits.
In a 2023 interview, Microporous CEO John Reeves said that the growing market for electric vehicles is increasing demand for battery separators.
“Every EV’s going to have battery separators,” Reeves said. “They need to be made in the U.S. We’ve got to fill that demand.”
The company has about 300 employees and plans to add 2,015 more through the Pittsylvania County location.
Reeves said Danville-Pittsylvania County residents will be sought after for these jobs, which would likely pay around $60,000 a year.
Rowe said that Microporous has been actively working with the state’s talent accelerator program in the past year.
“Our local workforce partners are heavily engaged with the company,” he said. “They’ve made some trips out to Tennessee to see the facility and talk about workforce needs. Everybody’s kind of starting to ramp up that support that it takes to be able to implement a large project.”
The company is providing updates on its LinkedIn page, Rowe said, and it has a dedicated webpage to advertise local job opportunities.
Even before becoming operational, Microporous has been a community partner, Rowe said.
The company created a community benefits advocacy group composed of both residents and Microporous employees. Microporous plans to put $500,000 per year toward various community initiatives, which will be identified by the group, Rich said at a panel presentation in Danville earlier this year.
Corrie Bobe, economic development director for Danville, said that this plan will focus on initiatives such as workforce development and recruitment, which include housing, transportation and child care.
So far, the company’s focus has been primarily on child care, Rowe said. A 2024 study by Virginia Tech named the lack of adequate child care one of the biggest inhibitors to growth in Danville and Pittsylvania County.
“We intend on being here for a long period of time, it’s a significant investment, we will be employing a lot of people, and we want to be an upstanding member of the community,” Rich said.