WaterFurnace doubling Fort Wayne footprint
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A manufacturer of geothermal HVAC systems is making a major expansion to its Allen County operations.
WaterFurnace International has broken ground on a $14 million, 173,000-square-foot expansion of its Fort Wayne headquarters, more than doubling its current footprint.
The company says the move will allow it to increase operating efficiencies and production capabilities to address an increase in customer demand.
CEO John Thomas told Inside INdiana Business the expansion is a long time coming.
“Over time, we’ve continued to expand our product portfolio for a broader range of solutions in the sustainable HVAC space, as well as the expansion of our business,” Thomas said. “We’ve really just outgrown the facility that we’ve been with here since 1991. So it’s time to build a bigger house.”
Thomas said the decision to expand its current facility in Fort Wayne instead of building another facility elsewhere was an easy one.
“We looked at the economies of scale of the benefits of expanding the current facility and what the functionality of that is. So it’s really an integration of expanding the efficiency and the overall benefit of operation of our current facility as opposed to independent processes. It just made more sense for us to go ahead and look at a significant expansion of our current footprint.”
The expanded facility will also allow WaterFurnace to consolidate three additional warehousing facilities under one roof. The company employs 320 people, and while no new jobs are immediately planned, Thomas said the employees at the other facilities will move to the expanded Fort Wayne operation.
WaterFurnace specializes in geothermal heat pumps, which use the constant temperature underground, around 55 degrees, to heat and cool residential homes and commercial buildings of varying sizes.
Thomas said building owners and homeowners are giving more attention to sustainable heating and cooling options as they look to upgrade or replace their current systems.
“We think using less is better,” he said. “It’s the lowest emission and lowest energy consumption option and most efficient option. And it also has double the reliability, so it lasts twice as long. So we think more building owners or more homeowners are just taking some of those broader terms into account.”
Inside INdiana Business spotlighted WaterFurnace’s operation last August.
The company said the expanded facility will continue to be 100% heated and cooled by its own geothermal heat pumps.
“It’s just kind of fundamental that we would utilize our own solutions and our own technology,” Thomas said. “And we heat and cool our entire factory as well as the office space. So the only fossil fuels we use in the facility are to run the braising torches when we’re fabricating and putting the equipment together.”
Thomas noted that the $14 million expansion is on the the first phase of what will be a multi-phase effort that would also include expanding the company’s lab facilities, though specific details on future phases were not provided.
The addition is expected to take about one year to complete.