GN’s New Shakopee Hub Signals a Big Bet on U.S. Hearing Care

Yesterday, GN cut the ribbon on its new North American headquarters in Shakopee, Minnesota—a 218,437-square-foot complex that now serves as the regional operational center for all GN brands and the U.S. headquarters for ReSound and Jabra Enhance hearing aids. The event brought together GN leaders, local government representatives, former employees, and hearing care professionals for speeches, a ribbon-cutting, and guided tours of the production floor and automation labs.

My take on the new facility? It’s impressively large, clean, and employee-friendly—and GN plans for it to serve as its world template for efficient, automated hearing aid manufacturing, repair, and service.

Built inside a former Shutterfly warehouse, the site has been transformed over the past 18 months into a state-of-the-art hearing aid manufacturing facility for GN’s hearing aid brands and a consolidated distribution hub for all GN products sold in the United States and Canada—including ReSound, Beltone, and Jabra Enhance hearing aids, and SteelSeries e-gaming gear. The building spans nearly four football fields with 58,000 square feet of office space and 160,000 square feet dedicated to production and warehousing. I’m ancient enough to remember attending the grand opening of ReSound’s previous headquarters in 2001, about 15 miles up the highway in Bloomington. To put the new site in perspective, that entire building would fit inside the warehouse of the Shakopee facility.

GN employs about 550 people at the new plant, with another 100 new jobs slated in 2026. It plans to ramp up from more than 2 million hearing devices and accessories shipped annually this year to over 8 million items per year by the end of 2026 as Jabra and SteelSeries distribution is added.

For GN, the Shakopee site is more than just a bigger building; it’s a template for how the company wants to run its global operations. “We started some 24 months ago strategizing around how we could do one GN operational center here in the U.S., and here today we’re standing in it,” said GN Chief Operations Officer Stefan Bergfors at the ceremony. He described Shakopee as the company’s model site: “This is the first place where we truly integrate GN into one group… It’s also going to be our Center of Excellence for automation that we can then distribute across the world.”

Inside the Center of Excellence, GN’s Engineering Automation Lab is already designing and testing new robotic systems for hearing aid manufacturing. This includes GN-engineered robotic arms for hearing aid repair that can handle delicate devices, preserve patient-specific programming, and verify performance before shipment. Drawing inspiration from the nearby Amazon and Fed-Ex warehouses, the plant is also being populated with robots that roll down aisles and distribute hearing aids to technicians, and they will soon be stocking and picking products from the massive warehouse. The idea is to automate routine handling and internal movement—reducing errors and freeing people to focus on tasks that genuinely require human skill.

From a U.S. hearing-care perspective, perhaps the most important decision GN made was where to put this facility. ReSound US President Mikkel Knudsen noted that the company seriously evaluated other locations but ultimately chose to “double down” on Minnesota instead of moving production offshore. “Unlike a lot of our competitors looking to go outside the U.S. for a variety of different reasons, we really wanted to double down and make sure that we planted our flag here in Minnesota,” he said, pointing to the Twin Cities region’s deep talent pool in medical device and hearing aid manufacturing and GN’s long local history dating back to the early 1980s.

Knudsen noted that ReSound has been among the fastest-growing hearing aid manufacturers in the U.S. and globally, and that the Shakopee facility is designed to support continued expansion. GN had simply outgrown its long-time Bloomington site—physically and technologically—and needed a new environment that could keep pace with the company’s hearing aid growth. The new building brings front-office functions (sales, marketing, product management, customer service) together with operations and manufacturing under one roof, which he says is critical for faster problem-solving and a tighter feedback loop with hearing care professionals.

Local government and Minnesota legislators who spoke at the event tied the project to both regional development and the human impact of better hearing. State Representative Ben Bakeberg, who represents the Shakopee area, highlighted the partnership among GN, the city, and Scott County, then shared a personal story: he was leaving the event to sit with his mother during chemotherapy, and he noted that their conversation simply wouldn’t be possible without her hearing aids. Representative Brad Tabke, a former Shakopee mayor, framed GN’s investment as part of the city’s broader growth and “fabric of our community,” thanking the company for choosing to build and hire locally.

For audiologists, hearing aid specialists, and patients, the Shakopee facility is intended to enhance quality and service levels, as well as more room for special events. Purpose-built manufacturing lines for all GN hearing brands, combined with a high-volume distribution center and consolidated logistics for Jabra and SteelSeries, are expected to improve consistency, shorten turnaround times—especially for custom products and repairs—and increase shipping efficiency when the automation cells are fully implemented and the warehouse is completed in 2026. The 150-seat event center and a dedicated audiology suite with a sound booth are designed for on-site trainings, customer visits, and professional education.

About 80 attendees got a tour of the new headquarters. My guide was GN Senior Project Manager Steve Hiller, who helped us navigate through busy sections of the new plant, including hearing aid assembly, custom shell fabrication, repair center, and customer service and administrative offices. We also met with Audiologist Francine Capasso who showed off the new WhisperRoom sound booth and explained hearing test equipment.

The tour also included stops at a Jabra headset display room and a special SteelSeries e-gaming room next to the employee gym. Additionally, there is an impressive SoundBites café and various meeting and conference rooms. The workforce at the facility is highly diverse, and the building includes dedicated foot-wash stations and prayer rooms to accommodate Muslim employees.

Next week, HearingTracker will publish an interview with ReSound President Mikkel Knudsen and GN Head of GN Regional Operations Michael Walther about the strategy behind this investment—from global production planning and automation, to turnaround times, and how the teams and facility in Shakopee might shape the next generation of ReSound, Beltone, and Jabra hearing solutions. Stay tuned!