It appears that Wisconsin Battery Company CEO Jeff Greene is a believer in the old saying “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
Back in June, Greene announced plans to lease the former Family Dollar building in Fennimore, stating the building could become a battery packaging plant for the Wisconsin Battery Company.
In an interview with the Fennimore Times on June 9, Greene stated that “ideally, we’ll be able to start in Fennimore in 10 to 12 weeks.” He went on say that as of June 9, he had received 30-40 resumes, and he hoped to “have the first 12 employees dialed in the next four weeks, which at that time would have meant mid to late July.
He had also stated he hoped to possibly lease or buy the former World of Variety building next door.
Additionally, in April of last year, the Wisconsin Battery Company broke ground in Portage on a new facility to produce batteries. The Portage location was to be a packaging plant until the new facility is completed, hopefully in a year at time of the ground breaking.
And then things went quiet.
The former Family Dollar building still remains empty and available for purchase or lease, and the World of Variety building has been purchased by Rob Krantz, owner of Krantz Auto Parts, with the building to become a hardware store later in this year.
According to an article in last week’s Telegraph Herald, Greene stated that the company missed out on a $50 million U.S. Department of Energy grant, which was part of $3 billion the department awarded this year for battery manufacturing and recycling operations.
Additionally, in her October report to the Fennimore City Council regarding the Wisconsin Battery Company and its CEO Jeff Greene, then Fennimore Community Development Manager Lydia McLimans stated, “Despite promises of a ‘big announcement’ in September, no announcement has been made, and we don’t expect one to ever be made. Their project in Portage is on hold for lack of funding, as they did not receive the grants they were banking on. Jeff Greene did ask me to write a grant on their behalf which we declined to do based on our research of the grant that led us to believe his proposal didn’t meet the grant requirements.”
“We didn’t win the grant. We’re going to have to do this on our own,” Greene told the Herald.
This month, Greene is hoping to round out a drive for $12 million in private investments through Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation’s Qualified New Business Venture Program, which offers incentives, such as tax credits, for investment in early-stage Wisconsin businesses.
This, combined with $40 million in industrial revenue bonds, will “kickstart the enterprise,” Greene said, although the company will need immediate revenue to pay off the bonds.
“We’ve had lots of pivots during this process,” Greene stated to the Fennimore Times. “We’ve had to modify our business plan. Mostly shifting from a private company to a public one.”
“We’re working very diligently to finally get this done,” Greene went on to say.
Greene also stated to the Herald that one benefit came from not receiving the grant, that being now having the ability to use the approximately 200,000-square-foot former Energizer facility.
He hopes to start a lease-purchase agreement with the former Energizer building’s new owners next month for the site of the new plant.
As he stated back in June, should the packaging plant come to fruition, Greene said he still hoping to hire locals, especially those who previously worked at the Energizer plant, with the former Energizer space serving as a warehouse for reselling Chinese-made batteries as his team conducts research and development for future manufacturing at the facility.
Down the road, Greene stated the company would sell green graphite and hard carbon to other battery manufacturers and would also manufacture its own specialty batteries.
“If Wisconsin Battery is able to get up and running in Fennimore, they’ll be able to attract talented workers,” Ron Brisbois, Grant County Economic Development Corporation executive director, said to the Herald. “I know we have that (manufacturing) skillset in the area.”
“We’ll grow slow,” Greene stated in his interview. “But we hope to have 200 to 300 employees in the next three to five years at the plant.”
When asked if he was concerned about attracting employees, as his original plan had his plant opening at or near the same time Energizer closed, Greene stated, “Our plan is to offer the highest wages and best benefits in the area. Attracting employees shouldn’t be an issue.”
Greene also stated the company still has similar plans for the Portage location, but with the Fennimore plant ready for use once nearly $3 million in equipment is added, and with the Portage plant still needing construction, Fennimore is his company’s main focus as of now.
One potential obstacle in Greene’s battery reselling plan is President-Elect Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs on China. However, Greene believes these tariffs in the long-term could benefit domestic battery manufacturers like his own.
The Telegraph Herald contributed to this article.
