Gaon Cable to double US cable capacity with $50 million Tarboro push

A $50 million investment will double cable capacity at Gaon Cable's Tarboro, North Carolina plant by 2027 — and the money is arguably the least interesting number in the story. The subsidiary of LS Cable & System expects revenue at its US unit, LSCUS, to jump roughly 3.4-fold in two years: from about 440 billion won ($327 million) in 2025 to 870 billion won in 2026, then 1.5 trillion won in 2027. Put simply, the plant that made $327 million this year is booked to make more than four times that by 2028.

The commercial logic is straightforward. Washington keeps tightening tariffs on steel, aluminum and copper-related products, and imported cable sits squarely in the blast radius. Local manufacturing lets Gaon reduce tariff exposure while Korean and Chinese competitors without US plants eat the levies. Tariffs as a moat. It's not a new idea, but rarely has it been executed with this kind of contract backlog behind it.

What's driving the numbers?

Two production lines are being added at Tarboro, with further expansion under consideration depending on new orders and customer investment plans. The demand engine is AI data centers, which now account for the bulk of LSCUS's business. The company supplies power cables and bus ducts to global technology giants and AI cloud service providers.

The anchor is a stack of long-term bus duct supply contracts worth more than 5 trillion won through 2030 with global big tech companies. That's roughly $3.7 billion of committed demand — the kind of backlog that makes a capacity-doubling bet look conservative rather than bold.

The demand profile is also changing shape. As AI data centers grow into large-scale campuses, major technology companies are building their own power generation facilities to secure stable electricity. That pulls demand beyond bus ducts inside the buildings, into distribution cables linking power plants to data centers, and overhead conductors for long-distance transmission.

Where does the business go next?

Gaon is responding by moving up the electricity value chain, from distribution into transmission. It plans to install new overhead conductor production facilities at LSCUS, targeting initial sales in early 2029. The timing is not accidental.

According to the Edison Electric Institute, US electric utilities plan to invest approximately $178 billion in transmission networks between 2025 and 2028. For scale, that's more than three times Gaon's entire contract backlog, spent in four years, on precisely the infrastructure its new lines will serve. The demand comes from AI data centers, advanced manufacturing facilities and new power generation sources.

There's also a third act under review. Gaon is exploring nuclear power plant cables as a potential next-generation business, working through the relevant products and certification requirements ahead of a possible phased market entry. Nuclear cable certification is notoriously slow and demanding, so a phased approach is less caution than arithmetic.

What does this change for shippers and buyers?

For procurement teams sourcing power infrastructure in North America, one more domestic supplier with tariff-sheltered capacity means one fewer reason to bet entirely on imports. For Gaon's competitors, a Tarboro plant with doubled capacity, a 5-trillion-won backlog and transmission lines coming online in 2029 sets an uncomfortable benchmark.

The endgame, as the company frames it, is an integrated US power infrastructure supply base spanning distribution cables, bus ducts, overhead conductors and eventually nuclear plant cable — one plant, most of the electrons' journey.

Whether the 2027 revenue target survives contact with reality is a separate question. But with contracts through 2030 already signed and $178 billion of utility transmission spending queued up behind them, Gaon has built itself a runway few cable makers can match.