‘Fourth largest building in the world’: Construction contracts awarded for St. Thomas battery plant

PowerCo awards two massive steel and concrete contracts for the new Volkswagen battery plant in St. Thomas. CTV London’s Bryan Bicknell has the story.

Two new contracts marks a major milestone for construction of the largest gigafactory in North America.

“What you can expect to see is a flurry of activity. We’ll be pouring concrete for foundations in the upcoming weeks. We’ll be building steel columns and all kinds of structural work,” explained Meredith Gibbons, Chief Procurement Officer for PowerCo Canada.

The Volkswagen subsidiary has awarded two major contracts for construction of its St. Thomas battery plant. London-based Magil Construction will construct the concrete foundations, and Woodbridge-based Steelcon has been tapped for the steel structural work.

“This is our third gigafactory that we’re building. We’ve launched the one in Germany. We’re partly through the one in Valencia. And now this is our third one. So, we’ve really built up a track record that we do build, we will build and now we’re starting to build here. So, I think we have a high trust in this market, and we have a high trust in ourselves to get the job done,” said Gibbons.

Construction includes 32,500 cubic metres of concrete for the foundation, and 500,000 square feet of steel form work.

The two companies together are creating several hundred onsite jobs during this phase of construction, according to St. Thomas mayor, Joe Preston.

“That’s a lot of construction workers that have to be housed somewhere. So, the more local we can do it, the far easier it is on the municipality, and the corporation, to try and make sure that we can have people onsite that are doing this and do it quicker,” said Preston.

“Thank you to them, parent company Volkswagen,” said Premier Ford, speaking at an event in Sarnia Thursday. News of the new contracts comes as the premier looks to bolster domestic industries in the face of a trade war with U.S. President Trump.

“This is going to be the fourth largest building in the world, and then they’re going to have their suppliers all behind their main building. It’s going to create thousands of jobs,” commented Ford.

Elgin Middlesex London MPP, Rob Flack, attending the same event, echoed Ford’s comments.

“Three thousand direct jobs at the plant. Three thousand. Thirty thousand jobs across the province,” Flack said.

From land-clearing, to several roundabouts, highway reconstruction, storm drainage ponds, even a rail yard - the sprawling site in St. Thomas’s east end is nearly ready to go, said Preston, although no date has been set for an official ground-breaking just yet.

“In my conversations with PowerCo, as late as this morning, as soon as these companies can assemble what they need to do and get started, they will now,” he said.