Hiring and training continues at Kia’s first North American automobile assembly plant in West Point as the facility gets closer to the start of production.

Kia has hired about 450 workers to build the next-generation Sorento. Hiring is ongoing and the plant should be at about 1,000 employees by the start of production in the last quarter of this year, officials with Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia Inc. said.

“Our state-of-the-art $20 million training center is a very busy place. It is hard to find a parking space these days,” said Randy Jackson, director of human resources and administration for Kia Georgia. “We have hundreds of our team members involved in post-hire training at the Kia Georgia Training Center in West Point. At the same time, we have numerous prospective team members going through their pre-hire assessment training there as well.”

Hundreds of Kia Georgia workers already have gone for training to Kia facilities in Korea and to Kia’s manufacturing facility in Slovakia. Those trips are expected to continue with more team members getting firsthand experience using the actual equipment they will be working with in Georgia.

“It is a huge advantage for our team members to gather valuable experience from our Kia experts abroad,” Jackson said. “These trips allow our team members the chance to further their training while also broadening their cultural horizons.”

The ability of the workforce to adapt to automotive was initially a concern because of the lack of automotive experience in an area that has been dominated by textiles for so long, he said.

“What we’ve discovered is that the work ethic in this region is second to none,” he said. “People here were raised on the principles of hard work and those values have translated into a successful transition into the automotive industry.”

Jackson said he is encouraged by the progress he sees each day and that he is confident everyone will continue making the necessary strides to be ready when the plant goes into production later this year.

“The Kia way is a philosophy built on continuous improvement and teamwork,” he said. “People are the heart and soul of this company. With everyone on board subscribing to our philosophy, we hope to make every day a little better than the day before.”

At full capacity, the plant will have the ability to produce 300,000 vehicles annually and employ about 2,500 workers.