Archer Aviation has closed agreements with financing and development partners for the construction of its high-volume manufacturing facility in Covington, Georgia, where the California-based start-up plans to mass produce its Midnight eVTOL aircraft.
Evans General Contractors, an international construction firm with headquarters in Georgia, has agreed to design and build Archer’s aircraft factory, while Synovus Bank has agreed to provide the company with a $65 million credit line to fund the development. That $65 million “represents a substantial majority of the cost of construction for the first phase of Archer’s eVTOL manufacturing facility,” the company said in a statement. It has not disclosed the estimated full cost of the facility.
For the first phase of the development, Archer intends to build a 350,000-sq-ft factory that the company has said will be capable of producing up to 650 Midnight aircraft per year. Nikhil Goel, Archer’s chief commercial officer, told AIN that the phase one facility is expected to be complete by Q2 of 2024. The company’s four-passenger Midnight aircraft is expected to enter service in 2025.
“In the first year we'll be able to produce in the single-digit hundreds of aircraft, and then that will ramp up to over 2,000 aircraft per year,” Goel said. To support increasing production rates, Archer aims to eventually expand the Covington facility to 900,000 sq ft.
Goel explained that the state of Georgia is providing Archer with government incentives that will support the scaling of the facility “in a pretty cost-efficient way.” Further support for the facility’s development is coming from car-making giant Stellantis, Archer’s production partner, which has agreed to provide Archer with up to $150 million in equity capital.
In seeking development and financing partners for the Covington facility, Archer says it focused on companies in the southeastern U.S. that have expertise in high-volume manufacturing facilities. “We are committed long-term partners to the community in Covington, Georgia,” said Archer founder and CEO Adam Goldstein.
“Consistent with our capital efficient strategy of getting to commercialization, we’ve achieved attractive terms on the project,” Goldstein added. “These agreements, along with our already strong partnership with Stellantis, give us the flexibility to ramp up our capacity and become the leading scale manufacturer of eVTOL aircraft in the world.”
