Pittsburgh Manufacturing Catches Eye of Financial Times

It’s been two years since President Joe Biden invoked Pittsburgh before a joint session of Congress, asking why wind turbine blades can’t be made in Pittsburgh rather than Beijing and challenging U.S. businesses to create manufacturing jobs at home.

And while a turbine blade factory hasn’t yet opened, a variety of other clean tech manufacturing facilities are opening in Pittsburgh. And the world is taking note.

Just last month, London’s Financial Times featured a Pittsburgh manufacturing facility creating the next generation of batteries rooted in zinc, an alternative to lithium-ion.

New Jersey-based Eos Energy Enterprises manufactures the batteries, which are the size of home air conditioners, in a former Westinghouse building left over from a previous industrial age in Turtle Creek, Pa., just a few miles east of Pittsburgh.

London’s Financial Times took note, The Financial Times featured the facility in a larger story about a U.S. plan to become a cleantech superpower:

It’s a young cohort of workers, many people of color and military veterans.

“We’re hiring right out of high school,” says Joe Mastrangelo, the CEO of Eos, the company making the batteries.

His goal for the factory in Western Pennsylvania is to double its total capacity to 3 gigawatt-hours in 2024, producing a battery every 90 seconds once the plant is fully automated. The workforce will also double to 500.

“We’re doing this in a location that was historically an old energy economy, creating not jobs but career paths for people to get to middle class,” Mastrangelo says.

(Those without an FT subscription can read the story here.)

Locally, the companies like Eos have gained headlines for their innovation and job-creating facilities. The Pittsburgh Business Times reported that Eos set up shop in Pittsburgh in 2020 and shipped its 100th system, a connected group of batteries that are put into a container about the size of a tractor-trailer, last year.

The Pittsburgh region has gained notoriety for its leadership position in energy and metal manufacturing, but it’s less well-known for its growing role as a leader in energy storage technology manufacturing.

Entrepreneurs in this industry have been coming to the region to tap into the energy and manufacturing talent that already exists here. By doing so, they are making Pittsburgh, long n energy capital, even more important in the transition to a cleaner, greener future, the Business Times wrote.

“I think it’s really unique for the region,” Matt Smith, chief growth officer for the Allegheny Conference on Community Developmen