Toyota expanding Jackson Co. plant creating 250+ new jobs

Gov. Brian Kemp made the announcement today.

Toyota Industries Electric Systems North America, Inc., (TIESNA) will expand its Toyota Industries Corporation (Toyota Industries) campus in Pendergrass with a new manufacturing facility valued at $69 million in investment. Gov. Kemp, Japanese Consul General Mio Maeda, local officials, and TIESNA officials broke ground at the site this afternoon.

TIESNA is a subsidiary of Toyota Industries, which is headquartered in Japan and develops and manufactures automobile-related products, including car air-conditioning compressors and car electronics components for worldwide carmakers. The Group has operated in Pendergrass since 2004, starting with TD Automotive Compressor Georgia, LLC (TACG), followed by Toyota Industries Compressor Parts America, Co. (TICA) in 2012. These companies currently support more than 400 jobs in Jackson County.

TIESNA’s new facility will be located at the 1700 Valentine Industrial Parkway campus in Pendergrass. The new facility will produce DC-to-DC converters, which converts high voltage to low voltage to supply power to auxiliary equipment. Operations are expected to begin in 2025.

About the Author

Ken Stanford is Online News Editor for GLORY 97.5, a position he has held since August 2022.

Ken was born in Moultrie, Georgia, and says he knew from the time he was 5 or 6 he wanted to be a “radio announcer.” That dream was realized when he was hired by Moultrie radio station WMTM in 1960 at the age of 15 as a weekend disc jockey. A 1963 graduate of Moultrie (now Colquitt County) High School, he has spent his whole career in Georgia working for stations in Atlanta, Marietta, and Gainesville – most recently as News Director for 40 years at WDUN in Gainesville. He is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force Reserves.

Ken retired in 2011 but came out of retirement last year to help GLORY, on a part-time basis, beef-up its online news presence.

He is the recipient of many Associated Press awards and is a former judge of state and national Associated Press broadcast news contests. In 2005, he was presented with the Georgia Associated Press Broadcasters Association’s President’s Award for Excellence in Journalism and in 2019 was inducted into the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame.

He lives in Gainesville with his wife of 52 years, the former Sandra McKnight of Clio, Alabama, and they have one child, a daughter, Lisa, who lives in Cumming with her family.