A $5-billion electric-vehicle (EV) battery plant being constructed in Windsor, Ont., by a company backed by Netherlands-based automaker Stellantis NV and South Korea-based LG Energy Solution Ltd. is now well into its hiring process.

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The joint venture, called NextStar Energy Inc., could generate up to $15 billion in government funding as part of a broader, somewhat controversial strategy to establish Canada as a clean energy superpower.

The plant is being designed to eventually produce 49 gigawatt hours of battery power per year, which is enough to power 500,000 EVs, and the company said it’s “hiring process.”

The factory is expected to come online by July 2024, but it will take quite a bit of work to get a state-of-the-art lithium-ion battery plant up and running.

How many people are being hired?

By the time hiring is complete in 2025, the plant will have 2,500 employees. NextStar currently has 30 jobs posted on its site, with plans to add another 100 by year-end to form a 130-person “launch team.”

The company’s HR department declined to disclose salary ranges and their diversity and inclusion standards for hiring, but it’s seeking engineers, technicians and business development staff. Engineers are responsible for the design of a project, while technicians are responsible for its implementation.

The 30 jobs currently on the site include: a posted on its site, who will be tasked with maintaining mechanical equipment, training technicians and managing contractors; a posted on its site, who will monitor the production process and products for quality; and a posted on its site to create written, graphic and digital content, and develop new communications campaigns.

Are those skills easy to find?

One expert said that filling those manufacturing roles might prove more challenging than it might first appear. Most engineers are already comfortably employed, so it’ll take a pretty sweet deal to get them to change jobs, said Brendon Bernard, a senior economist at Indeed Canada.

“To attract workers into the sector when there are already a lot of well-paying jobs out there, (the job) is going to have to be competitive,” he said.

In July, a professional engineer in Ontario earned on average $52.88 per hour, which is 54 per cent above the provincial average of $34.43.

“Clean technology better pay well,” Bernard said.

Engineers also generally have their pick of jobs. With the engineering unemployment rate in Ontario hovering at just 1.9 per cent, “there are not many unemployed engineers,” he said.

NextStar might find there just aren’t enough applicants to go around, especially since the manufacturing field is “greying,” Bernard said, with the majority of engineers in that field headed toward retirement.

In 2022, 27 per cent of manufacturing employees in Ontario were more than 55 years old, while the overall provincial average was 19 per cent. In a competitive labour market, Bernard said companies such as NextStar might need to take additional measures to get the right personnel.

For one, the jobs will need to offer good pay, opportunity for advancement and benefits, he said. But even then, “it’s not necessarily going to be easy to find people with certain specialized skills.

NextStar may need to settle for less than their “top prize” candidates, opting for someone who fits most of the criteria, but not all.

Several postings, including ones for a posted on its site, posted on its site and posted on its site, require fluency in Korean. NextStar did not answer questions about this requirement, but it seems safe to assume they are roles requiring communication with LG operations in its home country.

How’s it going so far?

NextStar faces an additional challenge: it will need to convince engineers to switch into roles that may require learning a lot of new skills related to the nascent field of EV battery manufacturing.

“Batteries are a new industry here, not only in this region, but also in North America as a whole,” said NextStar chief executive Danies Lee. “Everything is new.”

But prospective engineers need not panic because they won’t be starting from scratch, he said. Many of the skills they already have are transferable. To ease the transition, the company will send the 130-person “launch team” overseas for three months of fully funded training in Poland, where LG has a large battery manufacturing facility.

So far, the hiring process seems to be going well.

“The initial outlook is quite promising,” Lee said, adding that he would continue to wait and see.

• Email: mcoulton@postmedia.com