As a token of Kia’s appreciation, Randy Jackson, Kia Georgia’s director of human resources and administration, presented a check on behalf of the company to the college Thursday.
“We can’t say enough good things about the West Georgia Technical College and the city of LaGrange for allowing us to work out of this building during the past two-plus years,” Jackson said. “The hospitality we have been shown has blown us all away and we intend to remain close partners with WGTC and the city of LaGrange.”
Perrin Alford, the college’s interim president, said: “It has been our pleasure to have Kia call West Georgia Technical College home for over two years. We are overwhelmed by the generosity Kia has shown to us. This donation will be used exclusively for student scholarships.”
Jackson said Kia production and maintenance team members began relocating to the $1 billion facility on March 27. Administrative personnel should be moved in by today.
With more than 100 new hires coming on board in April, Kia Georgia will be at well over 600 employees by the end of this month.
“Our hiring process is moving right along as we continue to hit our targets,” Jackson said. “We still anticipate having between 1,000 and 1,100 team members when we begin production later this year.”
With most of the construction on the plant itself complete, the installation and testing of equipment is under way in each of the plant’s shops.
The Kia plant is scheduled to begin trials later this month and remains on schedule to begin production during the last quarter of 2009, officials said.
The new address for Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia Inc. is 7777 Kia Parkway, West Point, GA. 31833.
West Point is the first manufacturing site in North America for Kia Motors. At full capacity, the plant will have the ability to produce 300,000 vehicles annually and employ about 2,500.
And second, though there's nothing more than anecdotal evidence, it's been insinuated that Kia isn't hiring locally. There's certainly nothing wrong with hiring the best employee, but, if the HR director's best shot at getting new renters is to hire folks who'd have to move to the area, it stands to reason that's an incentive to pass over potentially more qualified locals to hire non-locals.