Louisville based GE Appliances’ $450M investment looks to create jobs

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Toward the end of 2021, GE Appliances made a major announcement: It will be investing $450 million to create more than 1,000 jobs at its Appliance Park facilities in Louisville.

Those jobs will be added by the end of 2023, and during a press conference Wednesday, GE Appliances CEO Kevin Nolan said the company is just getting started.

“We’ve been on a streak of four years of double-digit growth,” Nolan said. “We are the fastest-growing appliance company in the U.S. … The sky’s the limit to where we’re going.”

The Louisville-based company shared more details Wednesday on its $450 million investment, which includes:

• New equipment and assembly lines throughout the campus for capacity expansion to meet demand.
• An additional line shift in the laundry plant (AP1) for topload washers and the introduction of the GE Profile topload washer with the industry’s first built-in voice assistant.
• A new tall tub dishwasher and new stainless steel tub dishwashers in the dishwasher plant (AP3) to support the increased sales of the recently launched GE Profile UltraFresh Dishwasher system with Microban antimicrobial technology.
• A new line shift plus new counter depth 4-door refrigerators models in the refrigeration plant (AP5).

“When you think about our product lines, the things that we’re offering, we’re also having to invest in equipment in assembly lines,” said Cinthy Fanning, GE Appliances vice president of dishwashers. “We’re adding line shifts and those mean all new jobs to support the new products.”

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Besides the Louisville investment, Fanning said the company is investing more than $118 million at its LaFayette, Georgia, facility to grow its cooking appliances business. She said the investment will create 600 new jobs.

Starting pay for manufacturing jobs at GE Appliances is $17.17 to $18.67 per hour, depending on which shift employees work. Nolan said in today’s tight labor market, the company is looking to fill jobs “one by one.”

“We’ve got a competitive work environment and a real place of growth,” Nolan said. “… We continue to improve and listen and grow because just like we listen to our owners and our customers, it is the same with our employees. It’s got to be a great place for everybody to work.”

This investments are the latest in a positive wave of momentum for the company since 2016, when it was purchased by the China-based Haier company. Over that course of time, the company said it has made $2 billion in investments and created 3,000 new jobs at its manufacturing plants nationwide.

Of the company’s 15,000 employees nationwide, 7,300 work in the Bluegrass State. And the company said it contributes $6.1 billion to Kentucky’s Gross Domestic Product, part of the $20 billion it contributes to the country’s GDP.

As for what comes next for the company, GE Appliances vice president of clothes care Peter Pepe said the company will “continue to deliver those new products that we have out there and get them out there on time.”

“And we have to continue to invest in our factories and capacity so we can continue to serve the marketplace in 2022,” Pepe said. “We’re expecting it to be a great year, but we have to have the capacity and ability to do that.”

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Contact Ben Tobin at bjtobin@gannett.com and 502-377-5675 or follow on Twitter @Ben__Tobin.