photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

The Panasonic battery plant in De Soto is pictured on Jan. 17, 2025.

Panasonic’s $4 billion electric vehicle battery plant in De Soto currently has 400 employees and will have 1,000 by the summer and 2,000 by early next year, the governor and other state leaders were told on Friday.

With a host of area leaders looking on at a celebratory event in the partially completed lobby of the 4.8 million-square-foot Panasonic building, Panasonic’s top Kansas executive said the company is still committed to its original projection of 4,000 jobs inside the factory that is being built on the site of the former Sunflower Army Ammunition plant south of Kansas Highway 10.

“It is going to be absolutely awesome,” Allan Swan, president of Panasonic North America, told the crowd. “Every day I am reminded that we made the right choice by picking Kansas.”

Friday’s event largely was to celebrate the fact that Panasonic indeed did pick Kansas over 82 other U.S. sites, and that the plant is now just months away from producing its first batteries. The event drew many of the most powerful politicians in the state, including the governor, U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, the president of the Kansas Senate, the speaker of the Kansas House and a host of other state lawmakers and Johnson County elected officials.

Lt. Gov. David Toland, who was the state’s lead negotiator on the Panasonic project, said the project was monumental and created a paradigm shift for Kansas.

“At the state level, this is about proving that Kansas can do things bigger and better than anything we have ever done before in our history,” Toland said. “That is where we are standing today.”

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Lt. Gov. David Toland and Gov. Laura Kelly visit with Allan Swan, president of Panasonic North America, at a celebration at Panasonic’s battery plant in De Soto on Jan. 17, 2025.

The project has been touted as the single largest economic development project in the state’s history.

In a brief interview with the Journal-World following the event, Toland said area leaders should still be preparing for significant amounts of growth, even if they haven’t started to see the signs of it yet in places like Lawrence and Eudora, which — other than De Soto — are two of the closest communities to the plant.

“The first thing is, we are going to grow,” Toland said. “Lawrence, Eudora, De Soto, all of Johnson County and northeast Kansas is going to grow at a rate faster than anything we have seen in, probably, 80 years in our state.”

Lawrence leaders indeed were anticipating a spike in growth related to the Panasonic plant, as they envisioned significant numbers of workers moving to the area. However, as the Journal-World has reported, Panasonic officials last year said the plant likely would attract most of its employees from residents who already live within about 90 minutes of the plant. Unlike its plant near more sparsely populated Reno, Nevada, the De Soto facility perhaps wouldn’t attract hundreds or thousands of new residents to the area. Lawrence hasn’t seen growth yet, as single-family building permits actually set a new low in 2024, as the Journal-World has reported.

Toland, on Friday, said there are other numbers to keep in mind, though. The Panasonic facility is located on a 9,000-acre tract of land that used to house the Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant that employed more than 12,000 people at its height during World War II. The state is counting on other companies to locate on the property, and believes the Panasonic factory likely will be a magnet to attract them.

The state’s ultimate goal is for an auto manufacturer to locate near the plant, but there likely would be a host of other related businesses interested in the area as well.

“Our goal is for Kansas to be a global leader in the EV (electric vehicle) market,” Toland said. “That means creating an ecosystem of companies that support the entire life cycle of EVs. That includes batteries, that includes battery research and development, that includes recycling, and we hope some day it includes making autos itself.

“I would add that just up the road the Fairfax plant (Kansas City, Kan.) is being converted now to only produce electric vehicles. Kansas really is at the forefront of our country in supporting electrification.”

In terms of when it will be at the forefront of producing actual batteries, there were estimates at Friday’s event that they would start rolling off the line in March. That estimate didn’t come from a Panasonic official, but rather Gov. Laura Kelly said in her speech that is when she expects to come back to the plant for another celebration.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Gov. Laura Kelly speaks at a celebration at the Panasonic battery plant in De Soto on Jan. 17, 2025.

When the plant reaches full capacity, it is expected to be the largest electric vehicle battery plant in the world. At that point, the plant would be producing 66 batteries per second, and would manufacture enough batteries in a year for 500,000 vehicles, Kelly said.

Panasonic currently has 400 open positions that it is hiring for immediately, Kristen Walters, vice president for Panasonic North America, told the crowd. Many of those positions are for the company’s first production line. The company on Friday didn’t provide any details about wages or other details related to the jobs. Previously, the company has said production crews will work 12-hour shifts, as the plant will operate 24 hours a day.

Walters did say there are several high-skilled positions the company is currently filling, and it is using apprentice programs at Johnson County Community College and Kansas City, Kansas, Community College to fill the spots, which include high-tech maintenance positions.

While Panasonic’s job count hasn’t yet hit the 500 mark, there have been thousands of employees on the site for more than a year. The site has about 3,800 construction workers at various times.

De Soto already has seen a major spike in sales tax revenues as a result of the increased activity — sales tax revenues grew by about 50% in 2024. The City of De Soto cut its property tax rate by a third during the last budget season, as the plant has started to produce new revenues for the city.

The plant received the largest set of economic development incentives in the state’s history — roughly worth $1 billion — in 2022 when the project chose Kansas over Oklahoma and others. The incentives package wasn’t always popular at the Statehouse, as most legislators were never told who the company was that would receive the package. Panasonic insisted that its name not be made public while the project was still in the consideration phase.

The complications of the incentives package also include that the plan was being brought forward by a Democratic governor to a state Legislature where Republicans have a supermajority. The deal, though, got done in record time, and on Friday, any hard feelings were seemingly forgotten.

Senate President Ty Masterson, a Republican, not only took time to tell the crowd that Democratic Lt. Gov. Toland was a great commerce secretary for the state, but also said he was a great friend. Toland returned the praise. Many political pundits predict the two men may square off against each other in a race for governor in two years.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn

Lt. Gov. David Toland is pictured at celebration at the Panasonic battery plant in De Soto on Jan. 17, 2025.

Gov. Kelly did much the same with U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, the state’s most senior Republican leader. Moran, who wasn’t at the ceremony, was praised by the Democrat, who said, “That guy is all over Kansas doing all sorts of great things for Kansas. He is really a champion for Kansans.”

In that regard, Friday’s event felt a lot like an end-of-game victory celebration. But as the one politician who literally is the closest to the project — De Soto Mayor Rick Walker — said afterward, this is much more of a beginning than an end. The De Soto community had watched and wondered for decades what would happen to the old Army ammunition site that once was the undisputed economic engine for the community. For the longest time it was just a dark site that was home to environmental clean-up crews and development rumors that ranged from an airport to an amusement park.

No more. On Friday, he proclaimed: “The lights are back on and the jobs are here.”

But more important than that proclamation, he said, is that there is so much more to come.

“You have to remember” he said, “the first battery hasn’t even rolled off the line yet.”

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

De Soto Mayor Rick Walker speaks at celebration the Panasonic battery plant in De Soto on Jan. 17, 2025.