Greenworks Commercial, a manufacturer of battery-powered handheld tools and mowers, opened the doors to its new Commercial Center of Excellence for Manufacturing and Engineering in Morristown, Tenn., on Jan. 19.
The company hosted local and state officials, distributors and media alongside executives from its team at the 180,000-square-foot facility.
“We were determined to make Morristown our home for manufacturing in North America,” said Greenworks founder Yin Chen. “We have a very diversified team. We have people from China and Europe working together with a local team here. Our common goal is for this factory to produce the best battery-powered equipment on the market.”
Greenworks has plans to employ more than 150 at the facility by the end of 2023, with hopes of adding up to 400 people by 2025.
The Morristown facility will also house the company’s North American Center for Advanced Vehicle Engineering. The company says more than a dozen mechanical, electrical and testing engineers will work at the facility by the end of 2023, alongside teams in China and Sweden.
Automation in the workplace
The facility features automated guided vehicles, which shuttle mowers through the assembly line, and a fully-robotic welding center. The company says its initial development phase at the facility provides an annual production capacity of 30,000 ride-on mowers with room for growth to 80,000 in 2025.
“I saw this factory 18 months ago when it was still a (General Electric) factory, and it’s still transforming,” said Klaus Hahn, president of Greenworks. “It’s changing every day. What you see here is just a glimpse of what’s to come.”
Greenworks says it will also expand the Morristown facility with a parts and service warehouse and automatic assembly lines for its large commercial-grade battery modules to the facility by early 2024.
Battery-powered mowing
Currently, the facility manufactures Greenworks’ new OptimusZ zero-turn mowers. The battery-powered mowers, which the company announced at the 2022 Equip Expo, offer up to eight hours of runtime with a cut speed of up to 16 mph.
The company also plans to manufacture its first fully-autonomous mower, the OptiumusAI, at the facility by late 2023. OptimusAI will, according to Greenworks, feature GPS-RTK navigation and vision-based live-object avoidance technology.
Based on OptimusZ’s platform design, the mower also allows for manned operation.
