This story has been updated.
Heavy equipment manufacturer JCB announced last month it plans to double the size of its factory currently under construction on the South Side of San Antonio, an expansion that both underscores the region’s growing role in global manufacturing and the mounting pressure of international trade tensions.
The $500 million plant, which broke ground in June, was originally planned as a 500,000-square-foot facility employing 1,500 workers. While the headcount remains unchanged, the facility will now span 1 million square feet. The company’s decision comes in the wake of sweeping new tariffs rolled out by President Donald Trump early last month, including a 10% levy on goods imported from the United Kingdom, where JCB is headquartered.
“In the short term, the imposition of tariffs will have a significant impact on our business,” JCB CEO Graeme Macdonald told the San Antonio Report last month. “However, in the medium term, our planned factory in San Antonio will help to mitigate the impact.” By expanding its U.S. operations, JCB plans to sidestep the tariffs and localize production, reducing costs and insulating itself from further trade policy shifts.
JCB’s expansion takes place against a backdrop where many construction and development projects are facing delays or rising costs due to Trump’s tariffs and the resulting economic uncertainty. The company’s move suggests that for some companies, the threat of tariffs may actually accelerate domestic investment, at least in the short term.
To learn more about JCB’s expansion and what it means for the future of San Antonio, we spoke with David Carver, operations director for JCB Texas. Carver has been with JCB for 20 years, having worked his way up in the construction giant.
Having spent the last 14 months here in San Antonio, here’s what Carver had to say about the company’s most recent U.S. growth efforts:
Q: David, tell us a bit about yourself and your career with JCB.
A: My previous background, I worked in automotive — I worked in Jaguar, or Land Rover as it was called at the time. I started on the shop floor at Land Rover, working on the production line, doing assembly — and then I left school, really, with not much education. And then most of my education has been through this job. I’ve gotten a degree since I started working [at JCB], and I was lucky enough to get this position. To me, that really sums up JCB. JCB recruits for talent and trains people; we’re always looking for a good attitude, and if you’ve got a good attitude, you’re going to do fine.
Q: Can you tell us about the site location that was chosen in San Antonio?
A: It’s on the South Side, near the other manufacturers like Toyota, and it’s a 400-acre site. The footprint of the site was a ranch; there are still some buildings that were the previous owners’ — the chairman, when he first came here, said ‘Well, we need to not bulldoze these — we need to keep those buildings and restore them.’ So we are currently building those ranch builds into our customer focus and experience area, which is part of the facility. This month, I’m actually moving to the South Side to live in the community that we’re going to try and recruit from. We think it’s important to understand our community; these are our people, and we want to be part of that.
Q: Can you talk about the decision to accelerate JCB’s expansion plans here in the city?
A: When we first took the project back in England, we were looking at a 500,000 square-foot building. The original plan was to build one big building at 500,000 square feet. That would be our phase one, to enable us to bring the heavy equipment over. When we landed, we started going through the costs and speaking to our chairman, and we wanted to make sure this was the biggest footprint that we have as a group, so that 500,000 square feet moved to 720,000 square feet.
Obviously, things are changing with the tariffs and the risks, and I think the chairman wants to be ready for anything that comes at us so he said, ‘Let’s make sure we’ve got the capacity we need within the buildings that we’re building.’ So this building here, which was in our Phase Two plan, we’ve now pulled into the Phase One project. This building is slightly bigger than it was previously, and then we’ve added to this building, which gives us the 1 million square feet everybody’s now talking about.
Q: And where is JCB now with construction?
A: So the building slabs are ready — there’s just some remedial work they’re finishing off there. The piers to support the slab are nearly complete. There are just over 300 complete. Here, the building is starting to be delivered on site, which started in April, and this month, on the 16th of May, we’re going to start erecting that building. We want to work with local San Antonians. That’s been our strategy. So a lot of the builders that we’re working with are local San Antonians — our general contractor is Joeris, they’re our key contractor, and we’ve also worked with Baker, RS Construction, Ella SA — all working on the groundworks and the utilities. The other big thing is that part of our process is to have a paint plant installed inside. We planned to start off with just assembling products by the end of 2026, but now [the paint plant] will also open at the same time in 2026, so a lot’s going on there.
Q: How is JCB planning to recruit employees to reach that 1,500 we keep hearing about?
A: So 10% of our workforce, we expect to come from lateral hires or industry, from other employers that exist today — people looking for career development or career opportunities. Then 30% of employees, we think will come from the school system here — there are some really great programs in the school system, some great welding training that’s already going on. Diesel mechanic programs. CAST STEM is running a great logistics program. We’re probably working with 17 different schools and universities at the moment. And then the other 60% of our employees will come from people — people that are local and live here. We’ve been working with Mark Ramsey and the Ready to Work team. The military — I have to say, is fantastic here in San Antonio. We recently went to a second-chance job fair that was going on — that’s part of that strategy, and we’re working with a lot of really great partners such as Haven for Hope, Goodwill, the county, and some local agencies.
Q: JCB’s first American location is in Savannah, Georgia. This is the second, so what’s next after San Antonio?
A: We just expect to continue to grow. We really want to make the San Antonio location the center of our North American operations, where people could come and showcase our products. Part of the site development is bringing customers on site, where we can do demonstrations, they can test machines out, they can come and see a world-class facility, and see how great machines are built. So I think, for me, it is just about keeping growing.
Correction: An earlier version of this story attributed a logistics program to CAST Tech, but that program is at CAST STEM.
