Ford Motor Co., will start a $1.8-billion retooling venture on the Oakville Assembly Complex within the second quarter of subsequent 12 months, furloughing a lot of manufacturing employees for about six months because it prepares the Toronto-area plant to construct battery-electric automobiles by the beginning of 2025.
Preparations for the retrofit work that can start in “less than a year” are already underneath means, as Ford readies the Oakville plant for the electrical period, mentioned Bev Goodman, CEO of Ford of Canada.
“We’re thrilled that Canada and the employees of Oakville assembly are ready to play an important part of this incredible transformation.” Goodman mentioned April 11 in a convention name forward of the announcement.
Ford mentioned salaried and expert trades workers, in addition to some manufacturing employees will stay on the job through the six-month retooling venture. An undisclosed variety of salaried employees will likely be furloughed by mid-2024, however scheduled to return to work by the top of the 12 months.
The plant employs about 3,000 employees at present, and the corporate expects little change to staffing ranges on the facility as soon as EV manufacturing begins.
Dave Nowicki, director of producing operations, battery and electrical automobiles for Ford, mentioned the $1.8-billion retooling venture, which obtained $590 million in joint help from the federal and Ontario governments, will overhaul the plant’s current footprint.
‘USING ALL OF ITS INFRASTRUCTURE’
“We’re using all of its infrastructure — from the land itself to the buildings and even its roads — to quickly prepare for a new generation of manufacturing.”
Among different main adjustments, Ford plans to consolidate the meeting web site’s three current physique outlets into one.
“This not only should save time on our future assembly process, it should allow us to further improve build quality,” Nowicki mentioned, crediting the clean-sheet design of the corporate’s EVs for the smaller footprint.
Ford’s renewed Oakville campus may even home a 407,000 square-foot (38,000 square-metre) battery pack meeting constructing. Here, the corporate will assemble battery cells sourced from its BlueOvalSK facility in Kentucky into battery packs able to be built-in into the EVs constructed on-site.
“When production on the all-new EV begins here, battery packs will arrive on the assembly line in minutes, not hours. This kind of vertical integration drives incredible freight savings and timing efficiencies, even as we’re delivering EVs at a very high scale,” Nowicki mentioned.
As a part of the plant transformation, the 487-acre (197 hectare) web site may even be renamed to the Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex.
Despite sharing the timeline for the retooling work, Ford didn’t disclose what automobiles the Oakville plant will construct. Goodman mentioned particular product particulars will likely be disclosed “when the time is right.”
Ford’s retooled Oakville campus is scheduled to enter pre-production on battery-electric automobiles by late 2024 and manufacturing by 2025.
Source: canada.autonews.com