SKF announced plans to build a new 12,100m2 facility in the greater Chicago area. The Global Technical Center Americas (GTCA) reinforces SKF’s strategy to have these Centers near its important customers to focus on market specific product innovations, leveraging all of SKF’s five platforms – bearings, seals, mechatronics, lubrication systems and services. It joins two centers recently opened in China and India, while the two new European centers are under construction, one in Holland and one in Sweden.
“We have long been recognised as the world technical leader and innovator in our field”, states Poul Jeppesen, President of SKF USA Inc. “The GTCA will bring world-class SKF knowledge and experience closer to our customers in order to increase the speed of delivering new products and solutions to market. Our engineers will be working more closely with our customers in order to solve tomorrow’s engineering problems today, tackling challenges from energy efficiency to reliability and increased productivity. GTCA will also strengthen our connections to the excellent university research work in North America.”
SKF plans to initially invest approximately USD 30M, including employing around 80 engineers, during Step 1, which should be completed within four years. Construction begins this fall and operations are expected to begin by the end of 2015.
