GE Appliances Plans Second Shift At Just-Opened Fridge Plant in Louisville Jul 12, 2012

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With orders for new GE French door bottom-freezer refrigerators now expected to exceed earlier projections, GE Appliances now plans to hire 380 additional workers for a second manufacturing shift at its new fridge plant in Louisville, KY.

The plant opened in March 2012, in GE's Appliance Park manufacturing campus in Louisville, KY. Appliance Park was once - several decades ago - the biggest appliance manufacturing center in the world. The new fridge plant was the second plant opened at Appliance Park within two months; prior to 2012, there had not been a new plant in the park in more than 50 years.

When the new employees are added later in the summer of 2012, the facility's staff of production employees will reach 772. In addition, GE Appliances added about 100 salaried positions to support the new plant and product.

"Bottom-freezer refrigerators are the fastest growing configuration of refrigerators on the market today, so we had contingency plans for a two-shift operation," said Paul Surowiec, refrigeration product general manager at GE Appliances. "Our customers are extremely excited about our industry-leading ice and water dispenser technology with features like Hands-free Autofill, which automatically fills almost any container with filtered water and a hot water dispenser, capable of serving up tea and oatmeal in minutes. We are adding additional production capacity to ensure we can meet the demand."

"This is great news for our community. These are good jobs, and the tremendous investment GE is making at Appliance Park has spurred significant revenue and job growth for hundreds of local suppliers who have been involved with the bottom-freezer refrigerator and the GeoSpring Water Heater," said Metro Louisville Mayor Greg Fisher. "The growth of GE's manufacturing operation at Appliance Park and the ripple effect on our community continues to validate the city and state governments' decisions to encourage GE to choose Louisville when GE was deciding where to invest. We couldn't be more thrilled with their progress."

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