How it Works: Gotion’s Manteno Operations

Crain’s Chicago Business, September 12, 2025: MANTENO — It’s been two years since Chinese tech giant Gotion announced plans to build a $2 billion factory in this town of about 10,000 residents, just north of Kankakee.

So far the company has built the first five assembly lines inside a 1.5 million-square foot former Kmart warehouse in Manteno.

The Gotion project has been a centerpiece of the Pritzker administration’s economic development agenda — and also a flashpoint among some locals who pushed back unsuccessfully on the development, citing concerns over Gotion’s ties to the Chinese government. Now that the plant is operational, however, Crain’s took Gotion up on the opportunity to take a look inside.

The factory floor is massive, bright and surprisingly quiet. Robots do the heavy lifting, and much of the configuring, welding and other work required to create batteries used for industrial and home power storage, electric vehicles and EV chargers.

Automated vehicles, which look like industrial-size Roombas, are a constant presence on the factory floor. The assembly line is highly automated. Some workers mind the machines, others interact with them.

The plant currently assembles battery packs from cells that come from Gotion’s facilities in China. But Gotion will begin making its own lithium-iron phosphate cells early next year, when EV battery production also is scheduled to begin.