This Central KY factory will make glass for every iPhone and Apple Watch

Timmy and Tommy Shirley used to play baseball in what’s now the parking lot for the job that’s given them everything.

The pair are third-generation employees at Corning Inc.’s glass manufacturing facility in Harrodsburg. The plant is located almost directly across the street from the house they grew up in.

“My grandfather helped in the construction in 1952. My dad started in 1964 … when he was 18,” Tommy Shirley said. “And I started when I was 18.”

For nearly two decades, Corning has made glass for Apple iPhones. Following an Aug. 6 investment of $2.5 billion from Apple to finance an expansion and advanced production line, now glass covers for every iPhone and Apple Watch sold around the world will be made in Kentucky.

“So, we’re going to make devices right here in my hometown,” Tommy Shirley said. “That’s going to affect people’s lives all over the world.”

The brothers stood before the assembly line where they both work on Friday, Sept. 12, as the newest iPhone was made available for preorder and the facility was opened for guests to get an inside look.

Timmy Shirley said it’s “special” to have visitors at the plant both Friday and right after the investment announcement was made. He said those visits show how important the work they are doing is, and it shows him how important he, and his family, is as a member of the team.

Shawn Markham, a Corning corporate fellow, said Friday the impact the small community 45 minutes southwest of Lexington has made is impressive.

“Plus, it’s cool to hear my kids be able to tell their friends (with iPhones), ‘My mom made that,’” she said.

Aside from production line upgrades, Corning and Apple will also open a new Apple-Corning Innovation Center at the plant that will play “a key role in the development and engineering of advanced materials and next-generation manufacturing platforms for Apple’s future generations of products,” Apple officials said.

The Kentucky investment is part of a total $100 billion Apple is putting into the U.S. economy and its effort to bring foreign jobs back to the U.S. As part of Apple’s American Manufacturing Program, the company has planned more than $600 billion in domestic projects over the next four years.

“We really stand out among our peers as a really strong place to not only work, but to bring products that bring a difference to our world,” Corning Chief Operations Officer Hal Nelson said Friday.

Since beginning business with Corning, Apple has invested nearly $500 million in the Kentucky facility to support research and development, equipment and materials.

“Corning is a storied American company, and we’re thrilled to work together to build the largest and most advanced production line ever created for smartphone glass,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said when the $2.5 billion investment was made. “Thanks to the power of American manufacturing, any customer anywhere in the world who buys a new iPhone or Apple Watch will be holding precision glass made right here in Kentucky.”

The investment also marks the first time all Apple product glass will be made in the U.S.

Doing so means an increase of at least 200 hourly production jobs, as well as some salaried employees in glass development and engineering roles. The facility must expand, and Corning anticipates construction work will employ 100 people.

The facility now employs 350 people.

Corning CEO Wendell Weeks said Apple is “an amazing partner for American manufacturers like us.”

“We developed and made the glass for the very first iPhone in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, 18 years ago,” Weeks said. “With this new multibillion-dollar commitment … we are hiring more people and bringing 100 percent of Apple’s cover glass needs for iPhone and Apple Watch to the original home of the innovation.”

This story was originally published September 15, 2025 at 2:37 PM.

Piper Hansen

Lexington Herald-Leader

502-648-6715

Piper Hansen is a local business and regional economic development reporter at the Lexington Herald-Leader. She previously covered similar topics and housing in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. Before that, Hansen wrote about state government and politics in Arizona.