Carrier Global Corp. announced Thursday that it will spend $600 million over the next three years on a manufacturing and engineering center at Hillwood's AllianceTexas in far north Fort Worth, a project the company expects to create 1,500 jobs.
The Florida-based maker of heating and cooling equipment chose a building of more than 1 million square feet on Distribution Drive, The Dallas Morning News reported. The plant will build commercial chillers, the large air- and water-cooled units used to cool data centers, hospitals, schools and industrial sites. Production could begin as soon as next summer.
Chairman and CEO David Gitlin told the newspaper it is the largest investment Carrier has ever made in a single factory. He said orders for its commercial products have pushed the company's backlog to record levels and that it needed more capacity to keep up.
"The demand that we see over these coming years is unlike anything that we have ever seen before," Gitlin said.
How Fort Worth won it
The search started with six states and was narrowed to sites in Alabama and Texas, according to the report. Gitlin pointed to the attitude of state and city leaders toward business, the area's growing manufacturing base and its pool of skilled workers. Several Carrier customers, including data center companies, also operate in Texas.
The Fort Worth City Council unanimously approved a seven-year tax abatement for the company a little more than a month ago.
