Don Stewart (Courtesy photo)
LIBERTY — There’s a change at the top of the Toyota Battery Manufacturing North Carolina plant as operations at the site continue to ramp up.
Sean Suggs, who had been president at the Liberty plant, is retiring.
Don Stewart is next up as president at the plant. He has been vice president of manufacturing for the facility.
Stewart had been with Toyota since 1997 as a maintenance group leader at a plant in Buffalo, West Virginia. In 2018, he moved to Hino Motor Manufacturing before rejoining Toyota in 2021. He had held a role of plant operations lead at the Liberty site for parts of three years.
Stewart’s new role became effective May 19.
Suggs began in his position, which was newly created for the Liberty location, in June 2022. His retirement date is June 6.
There’s also restructuring among the top brass. Stewart also will be group vice president of Manufacturing Region 7, reporting to Kevin Voelkel, who’s now senior vice president of manufacturing operations and responsible for all of Toyota’s vehicle and unit plants in North America.
Stewart is an Army veteran. He has degrees from West Virginia Institute of Technology, University of Charleston and University of Wisconsin.
Construction at the Liberty site, which is Toyota’s newest plant in North Carolina, began in 2021. Employment numbers have been growing there and are expected to reach about 5,000.
Also, Toyota made a donation of $250,000 to Asheboro City Schools to create an innovation lab and global innovation center at the high school. That presentation was made during a reception at Hayfield at Murchison Farms in Liberty.
School officials said the donation will go toward the creation of a lab without its Global Innovation Center. The lab will be designed to teach students about Toyota careers and skills with hands-on opportunities for career exploration.
The district and a design team from Texas are working on details for the layout of the lab, according to information from the school.
