(The Center Square) — Gov. Tate Reeves has called a special session to approve incentives for a battery plant in northern Mississippi that state officials say will have a capital investment of nearly $2 billion and employ 2,000 people.
The deal will cost taxpayers $350 million, of which Reeves said half will be spent on infrastructure at the plant and the other half in direct grants to the company. Some of that, the governor said, will come from bonds, but an unspecified amount will come from direct appropriations. According to the governor, the state has $650 million in unallocated money in its general fund that could be used to fund the project.
Reeves announced the $1.9 billion project located in Marshall County near the Tennessee line on Monday at a news conference. The special session to approve the incentives will begin Thursday and could be as short as a day.
“This is a massive win for the state of Mississippi,” Reeves said at the news conference. “It will further enshrine Mississippi as a national leader in the automotive industry. This deal, in my view, is further proof of the good things happening in our state. The momentum we’re experiencing at the moment is unprecedented. Mississippi is attracting new jobs and our economy is growing stronger.”
Mississippi is home to plants for Nissan (Canton) and Toyota (Blue Springs).
State officials say the average salary for the jobs at the plant, which will manufacture batteries for electric trucks and industrial applications, is approximately $66,000 or nearly $20,000 more than the average statewide annual salary. Reeves said the project would have the highest payroll of any industrial project in the state’s history.
The plant will be located on 500 acres at the Chickasaw Industrial Park in Byhalia.
The deal will be the second-largest in state history behind the $2.5 billion Steel Dynamics project announced last year.