Amish company gets one of first contracts for Alevo battery plant in Concord

Alevo Group's plans for a $1 billion electric-grid management campus at a former Concord cigarette factory is spreading its good economic news as far away as Amish country.

Superb Industries Inc. of Sugarcreek, Ohio, has a contract from Alevo to make battery components that calls for 5 million parts in 2015. Eventually, the deal is to produce 100 million parts by 2019 that will be used in the electric-grid batteries to be made in the former Philip Morris USA Manufacturing plant in Cabarrus County.

Superb has already started a 12,000-square-foot expansion that will bring 50 new jobs to the plant in central Ohio. The addition to the current 50,000-square-foot plan will house additional Bihler production lines, which integrate laser welding, washing and leak testing equipment. The German company has a 250-employee machinery plant in Phillipsburg, N.J.

"Superb was selected in favor of other and larger competitors because of our Bihler manufacturing technology," says John Miller, president of Superb.

Jostein Eikeland, CEO if Switzerland-based Alevo, says he was pleased to learn this week that Superb was growing due to the Alevo contract.

"It has consequences and effects outside of Concord as well," says Eikeland. "These are the jobs that America needs: good craft jobs."

Superb's home in Sugarcreek is located of Interstate 77, south of Canton, Ohio. The business is owned by the Amish Miller family, which has been in the business of manufacturing since 1965.

Alevo announced Oct. 28 that it would hire up to 2,500 for the electric-grid battery plant. That number jumps to 6,000 if Alevo is successful in bringing suppliers' manufacturing operations to the 2,100-acre former Philip Morris site. That would be called Victory Industrial Park.

Ken Elkins covers manufacturing, international business and economic development for the Charlotte Business Journal.