Japan-based UBE Corporation is putting down serious roots in Jefferson Parish, building a $500 million EV battery chemicals plant at Cornerstone Energy Park in Waggaman just upriver from New Orleans. The 900,000-square-foot facility is set to produce dimethyl carbonate (DMC) and ethyl methyl carbonate (EMC) for lithium-ion batteries, and UBE says it expects the site to support roughly 50 to 60 permanent skilled jobs once it is fully up and running in early 2027, as reported by New Orleans CityBusiness.
According to New Orleans CityBusiness, the $500 million project moved into site work after a February 2025 groundbreaking and has already begun shipping modular plant sections into Cornerstone Energy Park. This year’s on-the-ground work is focused on piecing those modules together and finishing structural, mechanical and electrical systems as UBE pushes toward a startup date in early 2027. CityBusiness also reports that construction employment is expected to peak at about 300 to 400 workers, with roughly 50 to 60 employees staying on once the plant is in steady operation.
Production Scale And Process
UBE says the Waggaman plant will rely on its proprietary gas-phase nitrite process to turn out DMC and EMC, a setup the company says cuts energy use and by-products compared with more conventional methods, according to UBE. Company and state materials put the planned annual capacity at roughly 100,000 metric tons of DMC and 40,000 metric tons of EMC. At that scale, the facility is expected to be the only large-scale United States source for those particular battery solvents. The chemicals will serve a double duty, feeding both EV lithium-ion electrolyte production and certain semiconductor manufacturing processes, a one-two market punch that helped justify the half-billion-dollar spend.
How The Project Is Being Built And Who Is In On It
Modular construction is at the heart of UBE’s build strategy. Major equipment is being fabricated offsite, then shipped in and assembled on location, a tactic meant to speed up the schedule and keep work more controlled. Local and regional firms with their hands on the job include Morimatsu, Cajun Contractors, Triad, Hunt Guillot and Associates, Gray Construction and Roll Group, according to New Orleans CityBusiness. UBE has also made smaller community-focused investments tied to workforce development and education as construction moves along.
State Sweeteners And Why Waggaman Won
Louisiana Economic Development says the state landed the project with an incentives package that includes LED FastStart workforce training and anticipates the plant will participate in the Industrial Tax Exemption and Quality Jobs programs, according to Louisiana Economic Development. Parish officials and the Jefferson Parish Economic Development Commission point to Cornerstone Energy Park’s access to feedstocks and utilities, along with rail and river infrastructure, as the key reasons Waggaman beat out other options for UBE’s investment, per JEDCO.
Why It Matters
Company executives and state leaders argue that having a domestic supplier of DMC and EMC should bolster United States battery supply chains and cut dependence on imports at a time when EV demand is only getting louder. UBE has framed the Waggaman site as its first large-scale United States chemical facility and says its lower-emission nitrite process, paired with local feedstock access, is designed to meet surging orders from EV and semiconductor customers, according to UBE…