WASHINGTON BUSINESS JOURNAL: The company bought the facility from SemaConnect in 2020.
Blink Charging Co., which makes electric vehicle charging stations, is embarking on an expansion of its Bowie manufacturing facility that will grow its production capacity.
The Miami Beach, Florida, company (NASDAQ: BLNK) is investing $49 million to add 30,000 square feet to the 27,000-square-foot former SemaConnect Inc. facility. Blink bought SemaConnect and the property, 4961 Tesla Drive, for $200 million in 2022.
That will boost production of L2 Chargers — which recharge battery-electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles — from 10,000 a year to about 40,000. The expansion also will create 60 jobs.
The company declined to comment until its official announcement next week.
The Biden administration noted the $49 million investment in April when outlining public and private investments related the Inflation Reduction Act, which aims to deploy $7.5 billion to build out a national network of 500,000 EV chargers along U.S. highways and communities.
In earnings calls this year, President and CEO Brendan Jones said Blink has been ramping up production in-house, making the chargers less expensive to produce. Blink also been focused on standardizing its products and sunsetting older ones. Blink has installed or sold 78,000 charging ports around the country since it was founded in 2009.
Blink now produces a majority of its chargers built in the U.S. in Bowie, where it has pushed 12,000 or 13,000 units already. Even at that level, it’s sold out of some of its chargers, with deals including the U.S. Postal Service’s acquisition of 41,000 stations.
Jones said expanding in Bowie will improve Blink’s margins: SemaConnect’s production had 40% or 50% margins and Blink will be able to increase that further as it scales operations. The company, which has offices in Miami, Los Angeles and India, manufactures and develops the rest of its products in India, Jones said in the earnings calls.
“When we did the SemaConnect deal, we had wanted the manufacturing footprint when we acquired them, right? And that’s been excellent thus far,” he said in the May earnings call. “But also on pure product sales, they had one of the best margins in the industry.”
That’s going to help stabilize the company, which reported a $71.2 million net loss in the first six months of the year, compared with a $37.7 million net loss during the same period in 2022. Jones, who took on the role earlier this year, touted scale and an owner-operator model that lets Blink maintain the stations after they’re installed.
“Now, when we look at the industry, we appreciate that the industry is under some pressure and that there are hard questions starting to be asked about the path to profitability, across the entire EV space including Blink,” he said in the May call. “There are a few points here to make about Blink. We are growing at a very rapid rate, and this industry is still in the very early innings. We have carefully built the structure and capabilities to support a larger company.”
