Reporter staff

After a yearlong search, Pro Refrigeration, Inc., recently announced its has chosen Mocksville, N.C., as the home for its new East Coast production facility.

Over 22 years the Auburn company has grown into one of the country’s leading manufacturers of Process Glycol Chiller Systems for dairy, craft brewery, winery, distillery and food processing industries.

Pro employs more than 50 employees at its 25,000-square-foot facility in Auburn.

“We’ve tripled production over the past three years,” said Pro CEO Jim VanderGiessen Jr. “We had to either expand in Washington state or find an additional location to provide the increased capacity to serve customers and new targeted markets.

“The decision came down to several factors. Not disrupting the team we have in Washington and affecting the flow of innovative products from our headquarters is a big reason.” VanderGiessen said. “We also helped several customers in the craft brewing industry expand to the east coast. The more we evaluated, the easier it was to make this choice.”

The company plans to create 58 jobs and invest $3.6 million over the next three years. The project was made possible in part by a performance-based grant from the One North Carolina Fund.

A few of the employees will relocate from Washington, the company said. It has no plans to decrease the output and production from its Auburn headquarters. Nearly all of the new jobs will be recruited and filled from the Davie County (N.C.) region.