FENNIMORE, Wis. — After a quiet period since the news first broke in June, Wisconsin Battery Co. CEO Jeff Greene said his plans of opening a battery plant in Fennimore are back on track.
About six months ago, Greene announced plans to start a lease at the former Family Dollar building on U.S. 61 on the north side of Fennimore in July and possibly later also move in to the building next door, the former World of Variety hardware store. The entrepreneur said funding delays have changed his plans — primarily, his missing out on a $50 million U.S. Department of Energy grant, which was part of $3 billion the department awarded this year for battery manufacturing and recycling operations.
“We didn’t win the grant,” Greene said. “We’re going to have to do this on our own.”
In January, Greene is expecting to round out a drive for $12 million in private investments through Wisconsin Economic Development Corp.’s Qualified New Business Venture Program, which offers incentives, such as tax credits, for investment in early-stage Wisconsin businesses. This, combined with $40 million in industrial revenue bonds, will kickstart the enterprise, Greene said, although the company needs immediate revenue to pay off the bonds.
One benefit that came from the delay was the ability to use the approximately 200,000-square-foot former Energizer facility in Fennimore, Greene said. Originally unable to reach a deal for that facility and temporarily pivoting to the old Family Dollar building, Greene said he is now expecting to start a lease-purchase agreement with the former Energizer building’s new owners in February for the site of his new plant.
It was the closure of Energizer’s facilities in Fennimore and Portage, Wis., over the past year that led Greene to look at both towns as sites for new Wisconsin Battery Co. plants. About 175 workers at the former Fennimore facility lost their jobs, although Grant County Economic Development Corp. executive director Ron Brisbois said the community has generally recovered.
Brisbois said most of the laid-off Fennimore workers found employment nearby.
“I don’t know that we’ve seen a lot of people relocate from the area,” Brisbois said.
Greene said he is hoping to hire locals, especially those who previously worked at the Energizer plant and therefore have battery-manufacturing experience, calling them “impossible to replace.”
“If Wisconsin Battery is able to get up and running in Fennimore, they’ll be able to attract talented workers,” Brisbois said. “I know we have that (manufacturing) skillset in the area.”
Initially, Greene hopes to use the former Energizer space as a warehouse for reselling Chinese-made batteries as his team conducts research and development for future manufacturing at the facility.
Eventually, the company would sell green graphite and hard carbon to other battery manufacturers and would also manufacture its own specialty batteries.
“The best thing we can do is get a solid business model that we can ramp up quickly,” Greene said.
The reselling plan, Greene said, is threatened by president-elect Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs on China. However, he said these tariffs in the long-term could benefit domestic battery manufacturers like his own.
“It messes up our short game but helps our long game,” he said.
Greene said he is still optimistic for the future of his Fennimore plant and its impact on the local economy.
“Once it happens, it’s going to happen fast,” he said. “We still plan on having 200 to 300 employees in the next three to five years at the Fennimore plant.”