Huntsville’s new Mazda and Toyota plant is getting to work. The first product at the factory is a 2022 Corolla Cross vehicle. The Japanese automakers selected Huntsville in 2018 for the mammoth facility. The plant will eventually be able to produce up to three hundred thousand vehicles per year. The factory will specialize in a new Toyota SUV and a future Mazda crossover vehicle. The plant expects to employ up to four thousand people once it’s in full operation. Back in 2019, APR reported on plans at the Mazda/Toyota’s plans to begin hiring at its soon-to-be built factory. We spoke with Ed Castile, Deputy Secretary of Commerce, what the hiring process will be like.
“We have actually already posted three jobs currently on the Mazda Toyota website and on the A-I-D-T dot E-D-U website,” Castile said in 2019. “And we will start screening, processing on those people.”
Castile says they are looking to hire people in skilled positions, like industrial maintenance, tool and dime people, and production team members.
“There is everything from skill positions like industrial maintenance, there are tool and dime people, there are production members, and people who assemble the vehicle and that kind of thing.” Castile said to APR in 2019.
In 2018, the Huntsville City Council approved over three hundred million dollars in local incentives to seal the deal for the plant. That was on top of nearly four hundred million in perks approved by state lawmakers. At the time, the Alabama Department of Commerce thinks the incentive package was money well spent. There were estimates that the payroll alone from the new auto factory would top five billion dollars over the next twenty years.
