Dive Brief:
- Vertiv is expanding its North America infrastructure solutions manufacturing by opening a 215,000-square-foot facility in Pelzer, South Carolina, the company announced Sept. 24.
- The facility created up to 300 jobs and produces modular infrastructure solutions for data centers, including integrated power and cooling systems.
- The expansion supports Vertiv’s global growth for prefabricated solutions as the demand for artificial intelligence increases while also reducing overall data center time to market, the release stated.
Dive Insight:
Vertiv has been increasing its capacity of infrastructure solutions, switchgear and busbar businesses through increased utilization and manufacturing expansions in the U.S., Mexico, Slovakia, United Arab Emirates, Ireland and Northern Ireland, the company stated in the release.
“Our global infrastructure solutions business is strong and growing, as the demand for AI accelerates and our customers see the value of an integrated approach to support faster compute deployment,” CEO Giordano Albertazzi said in the release.
In addition to the Pelzer facility, Vertiv also operates a switchgear and busbar manufacturing facility in nearby Anderson, South Carolina, according to the release. The company operates 10 manufacturing locations in the Americas, per its website.
The company has also been building up its data center power infrastructure through acquisitions, especially for colocation and hyperscale sites. Since acquiring the E&I Engineering and PowerBar Gulf switchgear, busway and IMS business in November 2021, its capacity increased by more than 100%, Vertiv said in January. The purchase added 1,000 production jobs in 2023, expanding facilities and building new ones.
”E&I’s products in critical power switchgear, UPS input and output switch gear and busway fill the remaining gaps in the Vertiv critical power infrastructure offering,” Vertiv stated in a 2021 investor release..
Vertiv also said it anticipates further doubling capacity with expansions through the end of 2025.
The company joined the Nvidia partner network in March to get support from the software giant to grow its data centers. Vertiv agreed to build liquid cooling solutions for next-generation Nvidia accelerated data centers powered by Blackwell chip systems, according an announcement.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang cited the company’s partnership with Vertiv as a way to create effective cooling solutions for customers dealing with the increased power demands of new AI GPUs entering the market, Barron’s reported in March.
Demand for data center solutions continues to grow alongside the rise of AI. Advanced Micro Devices acquired server manufacturer ZT Systems for $4.9 billion in August. As AMD looks to boost its cloud computing and enterprise solutions offerings, it aims to leverage New Jersey-based ZT Systems’ expertise in manufacturing servers, as well as data center and storage infrastructure.