Mettler Toledo scale company building $30 million plant in Pasco, bringing 500 jobs
By C.T. Brown
Tampa Bay Times
Published: Aug 23, 2016

NEW PORT RICHEY - Mettler Toledo, an international supplier of precision scales and instruments for laboratory, food-retailing and other industrial uses, is relocating its operations from Hillsborough County to a new $30 million manufacturing plant in Pasco County.

The company will bring 500 jobs to its new 250,000-square-foot plant to be built at in Northpointe Village near the interchange of the Suncoast Parkway and State Road 54 in Lutz.

The company's product inspection division, known as Mettler Toledo Safeine, employs 320 people, and has been operating in industrial space on Benjamin Road in northwest Hillsborough since 1999. That division manufactures equipment to find metal contamination in food product lines.

Mettler Toledo also plans to close its plant in Ithaca, N.Y., which employs 185 people, and move that operation to Pasco County.

Viggio Nielsen, general manager of Mettler Toledo Safeline, said 15 consecutive years of growth meant the company had outgrown its 100,000-square-foot-facility in Hillsborough.

"We wanted a location where our current staff would be able to follow us and where we could pull new team members from a diverse and well-educated pool,'' Nielsen said.

"It is a great day in Pasco County and a great day in the state of Florida,'' said Bill Cronin, president and CEO of the Pasco Economic Development Council.

He was surrounded by 17 state, county and company officials as he made the announcement Tuesday morning inside the county commission chambers at the West Pasco Government Center. The relocation includes unspecified incentives that remain confidential because they have not been approved by Pasco County, said Cronin.

The company is based in Switzerland and its U.S. operations are headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. It has approximately 13,500 employees about half of which provide sales, marketing and service in 39 countries. Its manufacturing operations are in the U.S., Europe and China and its sales mirror that geographic diversification with 39 percent of its business coming from North and South America, 32 percent from Europe and 29 percent from Asia and other countries.

Mettler Toledo expects its Pasco plant to be completed by fall 2017.

Contact C.T. Bowen at ctbowen@tampabay.com or (813) 435-7306. Follow @ctbowen.