Archer closes previously announced financing deals on its high-volume eVTOL manufacturing site in Covington, Georgia

Archer has closed agree­ments with Syn­ovus Bank and Evans Gen­er­al Con­trac­tors for at least $65 mil­lion in financ­ing of its high-vol­ume eVTOL air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty in Cov­ing­ton, Geor­gia.

An announce­ment made today (Wednes­day) says the amount rep­re­sents a sub­stan­tial major­i­ty of the cost of con­struc­tion for the first phase. Con­struc­tion is already under way on the 350,000 sq.ft site, which will sup­port the pro­duc­tion of up to 650 air­craft per year and would make it the world’s largest eVTOL air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty by vol­ume. 

Phase one is on tar­get to be com­plet­ed in 2024, ahead of Archer’s Mid­night aircraft’s planned entry into ser­vice in 2025. Phase two then pro­vides the capa­bil­i­ty to expand the site to about 900,000 sq.ft to sup­port long-term pro­duc­tion tar­gets of more than 2,000 air­craft per year. 

Adam Gold­stein, Archer’s Founder and CEO, said: “The abil­i­ty to man­u­fac­ture eVTOL air­craft at scale is crit­i­cal to build­ing a suc­cess­ful busi­ness in this indus­try and Archer con­tin­ues to main­tain a sig­nif­i­cant lead on this front. Today, we’re tak­ing anoth­er major step for­ward on our man­u­fac­tur­ing build­out by secur­ing a design-build agree­ment and financ­ing agree­ment for the world’s first, and largest by vol­ume, eVTOL man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty.

“Con­sis­tent with our cap­i­tal effi­cient strat­e­gy of get­ting to com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion, we’ve achieved attrac­tive terms on the project. 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.”

Archer remains on track with man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty con­struc­tion, which began in March 2023, by clos­ing pre­vi­ous­ly announced financ­ing. The com­pa­ny says its strat­e­gy of lever­ag­ing top tier aero­space sup­pli­ers for a major­i­ty of Midnight’s air­craft com­po­nents stream­lines the man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es, enabling a cap­i­tal effi­cient facil­i­ty that is set to achieve high vol­umes of out­put.

Archer’s goal is to trans­form urban trav­el, replac­ing 60–90 minute com­mutes by car, with esti­mat­ed 10–20 minute elec­tric air­craft flights that are safe, sus­tain­able, low noise and cost com­pet­i­tive with ground trans­porta­tion. Archer’s Mid­night is a pilot­ed, four pas­sen­ger air­craft designed to per­form rapid back-to-back flights with min­i­mal charge time in between flights.

Archer’s Mid­night air­craft will  be man­u­fac­tured at the company’s high-vol­ume man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty in Cov­ing­ton, before being deployed to dif­fer­ent cus­tomers and mar­kets in the U.S. and abroad.

Pic­tures from left to right: A ren­der­ing of Archer’s Cov­ing­ton facil­i­ty, and the site at the moment as work con­tin­ues to build the 350,000 sq.ft site. Cred­it: Archer Avi­a­tion.