Deere & Company, the maker of John Deere agricultural, construction and forestry equipment, has selected a location in Kernersville, North Carolina, for the construction of a new 115,000-square-foot manufacturing facility. John Deere established its Kernersville campus in 1988.

The new factory will expand production capacity of Kreisel Electric products to serve the off-highway market in North America. Kreisel, which John Deere acquired in 2022, produces battery technology for e-mobility and stationary systems as well as DC fast charging solutions. The planned production facility will manufacture Kreisel battery and CHIMERO charger technology, and will have annual production capacity of up to 2 GWh. John Deere plans to break ground in fall 2023, and production is expected to begin in 2025.

The Kernersville facility will have “a non-fossil-fuel-consuming design,” and will feature sustainable energy features in its HVAC, energy recovery, lighting and irrigation systems.

John Deere is also upfitting a facility to enable battery production at its factory in Saran, France—the primary manufacturing location for John Deere engines in Europe.

“Our customers are facing challenges that require their businesses to be more dynamic than ever before—we are engineering the technological innovations they’ll rely on to do so,” said Jennifer Preston, Global Director of John Deere Electric Powertrain and CEO of Kreisel. “Together with Kreisel, John Deere is expanding its electrification portfolio to include more scalable solutions to meet a wider range of our customers’ application needs.”

“Within the evolving off-highway equipment market, we are prioritizing the development of a robust charging ecosystem and battery portfolio that can support and sustain the long-term adoption of electrification across a wide variety of applications,” said Pierre Guyot, Senior Vice President of John Deere Power Systems and Chairman of Kreisel.

Source: John Deere