Haier GE Appliances to expand capacity in Kentucky

GE Appliances, a business unit of Qingdao, China-based Haier, has announced it intends to invest $490 million at its Louisville, Kentucky, headquarters and manufacturing site to allow for the production of more than 15 washer and drier models.

The addition of 800 employees and their production activities likely will lead to the increased generation of recyclable metal, old corrugated containers (OCC), plastic film and other secondary commodities at the site.

Haier says the project will bring production of the GE Profile UltraFast Combo Washer/Dryer and the GE and GE Profile UltraFresh Front Load Washer models to Kentucky.

The company says its investment positions it to become the biggest American washer manufacturer and says the move builds on GE Appliances’ 10-year, $3.5 billion investment in United States manufacturing.

“We are bringing laundry production to our global headquarters in Louisville because manufacturing in the U.S. is fundamental to our ‘zero-distance’ business strategy to make appliances as close as possible to our customers and consumers,” says Kevin Nolan, president and CEO of GE Appliances. “This decision is our most recent product reshoring and aligns with the current economic and policy environment.”

Harry Moser, president of the Florida-based Reshoring Initiative, credits GE Appliances for what he calls its “historic role launching, documenting and making credible U.S. reshoring.”

Moser says the Reshoring initiative was founded in 2010, and in 2012 reshoring “was still a trickle that no one had heard of.”

Yet that same year, says Moser, the magazine The Atlantic published a story describing how GE Appliances was beginning to reshore appliance production from China to Appliance Park [in Louisville], “which employed a tenth of the people” at that time compared with its heyday.

States Moser, “The article reviewed a broad range of benefits GE Appliances achieved by reshoring. Most memorable to me was the benefit of having manufacturing near engineering. The assembly team and engineering cooperated to simplify appliance design to reduce component cost and assembly time to make U.S. assembly competitive.”

Remarks Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, “Today’s announcement further secures Louisville as the global headquarters of GE Appliances, a Haier company, and brings more world-class, unparalleled appliance manufacturing back to the United States.”

This investment will move production of more than 15 models of front load washers to Building 2 at Appliance Park in Louisville, says GE Appliances. The firm says the additional capacity will expand the total area of washer and drier production “to the equivalent of 33 football fields.”

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The company says Building 2 will be redesigned and vertically integrated to include the in-house manufacturing of components such as stainless steel baskets and cabinets. The retrofit fit will involve the installation of metal stamping and forming and injection-molding and production equipment.

Haier and GE Appliances say they expect the new manufacturing lines will open in 2027.