Modine Opens 682,000-Square-Foot Chiller Factory in Texas

Modine started commercial production on November 11, 2026 at a new 682,000-square-foot Airedale chiller factory in Grand Prairie, Texas, adding U.S. manufacturing capacity for the equipment that keeps AI data centers from overheating. The plant is dedicated to building 2MW and 3MW chillers with free cooling, and its customers, in Modine's framing, are hyperscale cloud providers, colocation operators and high-density AI computing environments.

The stakes are straightforward. AI compute concentrates heat in ways that ordinary server rooms never did, and cooling has become a bottleneck for data-center buildouts. Modine's answer is to put manufacturing capacity physically close to the customers who need it.

President and CEO Neil D. Brinker described the launch as a milestone in Modine's U.S. capacity-expansion plan. He said locating capacity near customers is intended to support delivery of engineered cooling systems.

What is actually running at Grand Prairie today?

The initial production line is operating. That is the whole picture for now. Modine is targeting four operational lines by the end of its current fiscal year, subject to equipment commissioning, workforce readiness and other operational considerations.

The facility currently runs one shift, with plans to scale systematically to three. Modine expects Grand Prairie to become the largest Airedale chiller manufacturing facility in its global footprint.

The chillers sit within a wider Airedale portfolio that includes:

• Dry coolers
• Coolant distribution units
• Intelligent controls

Modine describes these systems as designed for complex, high-density thermal demands while maximizing energy and water efficiency.

Where did the money come from?

The Grand Prairie plant is the centerpiece of a $100 million investment that Modine announced on July 29, 2025. At the time, the company expected deployment over the following 12 to 18 months to expand manufacturing capacity for North American data-center cooling products.

The plan covered more than one site. It included:

• A new Dallas-area facility — which became Grand Prairie
• An expansion in Grenada, Mississippi
• Possible repurposing of existing Performance Technologies sites in Franklin, Wisconsin, and Jefferson City, Missouri

The investment also included enhancements to engineering, product-development and testing capabilities, alongside new jobs and support for redeploying and retraining existing employees.

Eric McGinnis, president of Modine's Climate Solutions segment at the time of the announcement, described the expansion as a local-for-local strategy. He said it focused on regions where Modine was seeing the greatest demand.

How many jobs, and at what wage?

The City of Grand Prairie announced Modine's site selection on October 14, 2025. The city identified 2100 Refuge Way as the location and projected more than 1,000 new jobs with an average annual wage of $66,760.

Modine cited several reasons for choosing the site:

• The Dallas–Fort Worth location
• Transportation infrastructure
• Proximity to DFW International Airport
• Access to a skilled workforce supported by regional training programs
• Cooperation with city staff

The city's original schedule called for groundbreaking in the fourth quarter of 2025 and operations in the first quarter of 2026. The announced production start came later than that initial operating expectation.

What does this mean for Modine's data-center business?

In the same July 2025 investment announcement, Brinker set a management target for total data-center revenue to approach $2 billion in fiscal 2028. That number frames why a century-old thermal-management company is pouring capital into Texas real estate.

Grand Prairie turns part of that program into operating capacity. But the scale of its near-term contribution to the $2 billion ambition now rests on completing a ramp that is conditioned on equipment commissioning and workforce readiness — the two factors Modine itself names as gating the move from one line to four.

The production start is real, and the factory is real. The rest is a schedule Modine has to hit, in a market where its hyperscale customers are building faster than almost anyone can supply them.