A Chinese battery materials company that pledged to create nearly 1,200 jobs and invest $916 million in Ohio has lost state tax incentives after falling short of its commitments.
In 2022, Ohio officials and the city of Sidney welcomed the arrival of Chinese company Semcorp Advanced Materials Group. The company pledged that its U.S. subsidiary, Semcorp Manufacturing USA LLC (Semcorp), would invest about $916 million in the area and create as many as 1,199 jobs by 2027.
Semcorp is one of the largest producers of lithium battery separators and was among the first companies in China’s battery supply chain to expand overseas. Battery separators are a key component used in electric vehicles, energy storage systems, and consumer electronics batteries.
Local officials had initially expressed optimism that the project would provide a major boost to the regional economy.
“I’m pleased the Sidney site was selected for [Semcorp’s] expansion into the United States market. This is a huge win for our businesses in the United States that will utilize [Semcorp’s] product and develop the supply chain for EV batteries and vehicles,” Shelby County Commissioner Julie Ehemann said shortly after the company formally announced its decision to locate its U.S. facility in the city, Sidney Daily News reported. “This decision ensures Shelby County will continue to be known as a manufacturing hub and ensures our residents have access to well-paying jobs.”
Four years later, however, state officials determined that the project had fallen behind schedule. At the same time, the company’s progress toward its promised job-creation goals remained difficult to assess.The Ohio Tax Credit Authority ultimately voted on June 1 of this year to cancel the tax credit. The decision was made after the agency had already relaxed the project’s original requirements. In April 2024, it approved a revision allowing Semcorp to reduce its promised job-creation target from 1,199 full-time-equivalent positions to 300, and still retain eligibility for a 10-year job-creation tax credit at a rate of 1.96 percent.
Mason Waldvogel, chief communications officer for the Ohio Department of Development, told The Epoch Times via email that “Because Ohio’s Job Creation Tax Credit is a performance-based incentive, companies must meet specific commitments before receiving any benefit and an agreement must be executed. Without an agreement, Semcorp did not receive its tax credit.”
He noted that Semcorp never signed a final tax credit agreement with the department. As a result of the June 1 vote by the Ohio Tax Credit Authority, the company is no longer eligible for the incentives.
Semcorp did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
Waldvogel said that because Semcorp never executed a final agreement with the state, it was not required to submit annual employment reports. As a result, Ohio does not have detailed information on how many local residents the company has hired.
Separately, an Enterprise Zone agreement reached with Semcorp may be terminated.
According to a June 18 letter issued by the Regional Planning Commission of Shelby County, the Shelby County Tax Incentive Review Committee recommended that county commissioners rescind Semcorp’s Enterprise Zone agreement. The committee found after a meeting in March that as the project “was not underway by construction completion date of 12/31/2025,” the company had “materially failed to fulfill its obligation under the Agreement.”
Progress on Semcorp’s U.S. battery separator project has remained slow. The original 2022 plan called for a $916 million investment and annual production capacity of 1 billion to 1.2 billion square meters of base film and related coating facilities. In early 2024, the company scaled the project back to a $276 million investment and reduced the scope to 14 coated-separator production lines with a combined annual capacity of 700 million square meters.
According to Chinese state media The Paper, the U.S. project had received cumulative investment of about 535 million yuan (about $74 million) by the end of 2025 and was approximately 44.07 percent complete, significantly behind the pace of the company’s projects in China and Hungary.
Semcorp has also faced setbacks in other overseas expansion projects. The same report by The Paper stated that Semcorp had canceled a major project in Malaysia. The project was originally designed to add approximately 1 billion square meters of annual separator production capacity, with a planned investment of about 2 billion yuan (about $295.4 million). The company abandoned the project after two years without meaningful progress.
