A Swedish company will invest $29.95 million in its Botetourt County manufacturing site and create 270 jobs as it seeks to serve the growing data center market, the governor’s office said Tuesday.
Munters Corp. will build a new 200,000-square-foot facility on 30 acres next to its current location at 158 Shooting Star Way in Daleville, at the Botetourt Center at Greenfield in southern Botetourt County, according to a news release from Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s office.
In 2022, Munters, formerly called DesChamps Technologies, moved from the Buena Vista location where it opened in 1990 to Botetourt County, building a $36.5 million, 365,000-square-foot manufacturing facility that was slated to bring 200 jobs.
A Munters official could not be reached for comment Tuesday to provide the company’s current employment figure or a timeline for the latest expansion.
Stockholm, Sweden-based Munters makes climate control systems for industries including pharmaceuticals, data centers and agriculture, and it aims to use as little energy and water as possible in its systems, according to the news release.
The new facility will continue to make HVAC equipment for data centers as well as a newly acquired line of chillers, which remove heat from data center server rooms to keep the computer equipment from overheating.
Stefan Aspman, Munters’ president of data center technologies, said in the news release that the company has seen “strong growth” in its data center business over the past five years and has invested in Ireland, Italy and Thailand. In the U.S., the company has locations in Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan and Texas.
“To meet the expanding U.S. market, we are enlarging our Virginia facility, creating a Data Center Technologies production campus. Together with our Texas facility, this will provide nearly 700,000 square feet of space dedicated to innovative, energy-efficient data center cooling systems,” Aspman said.
Virginia is home to a massive concentration of data centers, which are the large buildings full of computer servers that power numerous business and online services such as artificial intelligence, cloud storage and websites. Most of the commonwealth’s data centers are in Northern Virginia.
“With 270 new jobs coming to Botetourt County, we’re strengthening the region’s economy and affirming that Virginia is open for business and ready to lead in global innovation,” Youngkin said in the release. “This investment also underscores the Commonwealth’s strategic role in supporting advanced industries like data center technology.”
Virginia officials approved $1.5 million in state grants tied to Munters’ expansion. Munters also is eligible for a state transportation grant aimed at improving local road access and is eligible for job creation consulting services through a state program.
Munters’ continued growth is an “economic bellwether,” said John Hull, executive director of the Roanoke Regional Partnership, a regional economic development organization credited with helping secure the company’s investment in Daleville.
“An expansion less than three years after establishing its operations in the region is a signal that business is good and that Botetourt County and the Roanoke Region have supported a new corporate family member,” Hull said in the news release.
