Following approval by Carel Industries Board of Directors in September, the planned expansion of the production plant located in Manheim, Pennsylvania started on December 05, 2018 with a ground-breaking ceremony.

The US plant expansion plan, which will more than double the area devoted to production from the current 35,000 to 75,000 square feet, is part of a global geographic footprint expansion strategy, involving mainly the US, Europe and China, serving the company’s organic growth for the coming years. In particular, expanding production capacity in the United States will bring a wide range of advantages:

• firstly, it will allow us to be even closer to our customers and meet their needs more promptly and effectively;
• secondly, it will be a fundamental step in increasing our market share in the country, avoiding bottlenecks and improving logistics;
• thirdly, it will enhance our ability to address global turmoil, constituting a further improvement in currency hedging.

In addition to this, we expect that the positive impacts for the company will also be accompanied by positive impacts for the local community where the plan is being developed: an increase in production capacity will in fact require additional qualified workers in a sector and for a Group in which environmental sustainability is a fundamental asset. The building expansion work is expected to completed by May 2019.

Francesco Nalini, the Group’s Chief Executive Officer, commented: “Implementation of our geographic footprint expansion project is a milestone in CAREL’s growth strategy, enabling us to improve our ability to compete globally. Particularly important is the role that we have assigned to the US market, as demonstrated by the fact that the ground-breaking ceremony on December 05, 2018 followed the implementation of the first US programmable controller production line, completed last summer. We expect this country to represent a significant accelerator for CAREL’s growth, which, as usual, will be based on innovation, energy efficiency and customer care.”