Hitachi Energy plans $26M expansion in Halifax County

Hitachi Energy plans to invest $26 million into expanding its South Boston facility, that manufactures transformers, a move expected to create about 100 jobs, according to a news release the company shared with a few stakeholders in the Southern Virginia region in June. 

In April, Hitachi announced plans to invest over $1.5 billion to increase global transformer production by 2027. The investment will span Europe, the Americas and Asia, and will include around $180 million to build a transformer factory in Finland, “a key location for clean technology development for renewables and industrial electrification,” according to a news release.

Hitachi’s expansion at the South Boston facility will expand capacity for producing distribution transformers, according to the release, which was dated June 18.

“This expansion underscores our commitment to serving our customers’ evolving needs while also strengthening the local economy,” Steve McKinney, managing director of Hitachi’s transformer business in North America, stated in the announcement.

The $26 million investment will pay for new equipment, upgrades and other production-line improvements at the South Boston facility, which currently has 585 employees, according to Kurt Steinert, Hitachi’s head of external communications in North America.

In 2022, Hitachi announced a $37 million investment to expand its South Boston operation, a project expected to create 165 jobs.

With that expansion, Hitachi planned to add 26,000 square feet to the South Boston facility’s power transformer factory, which is 90,000 square feet.

That work is “still underway,” Steinert explained in a statement to Virginia Business, “but we are still in line with our plan in terms of the expansion in square footage and jobs.”

The South Boston facility’s distribution transformer factory is 517,000 square feet.

Distribution transformers provide stepped-down voltages to consumers. Typically, power transformers are used to transmit high voltages and are used in generating stations.

The new positions created at the South Boston facility, which has been in operation since 1968, will be in skilled manufacturing, engineering and administration.

Hitachi did not receive “specific incentives” from the state government to expand in South Boston, according to Steinert.

When asked why Hitachi decided to limit spreading the news to a few stakeholders in the immediate community, Steinert wrote, “it’s mainly a question of timing, and whether we might couple this with other news related to our manufacturing footprint in North America in future.”

A spokesperson for the Virginia Economic Development Partnership said the authority did not assist with Hitachi’s June 18 expansion announcement. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the expansion.

Requests for comment from Kristy Johnson, executive director of the Industrial Development Authority of Halifax County, and Scott Simpson, county administrator for Halifax County, were not immediately returned Tuesday.

With headquarters in Switzerland, Hitachi Energy employs more than 40,000 workers in 90 countries.