Samsung Electronics will newly establish at its Gwangju plant the HVAC production line of FläktGroup, which it acquired last year, to respond to the rapidly growing global heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) market.
Samsung Electronics, FläktGroup Korea and the Jeonnam-Gwangju Integrated Special City signed an investment agreement on the 19th at the Gwangju government complex. Attending the signing ceremony were Min Hyung-bae, mayor of the Jeonnam-Gwangju Integrated Special City, Kim Cheol-gi, head of Samsung Electronics' DA Division (executive vice president), and Lim Seong-taek, CEO of FläktGroup Korea (head of the DA Division's HVAC Business Team).
Samsung Electronics will invest about 240 billion won to build an air control product production line with a total floor area of 21,800 square meters (about 6,600 pyeong) at Campus 3 of the Gwangju plant. It is a large-scale production facility investment being made 37 years after the establishment of the Gwangju plant (then Gwangju Electronics) in 1989. The Gwangju plant began as a home appliance production base and has expanded its role into a core production hub manufacturing AI appliances such as the "Bespoke AI Family Hub" refrigerator, "Bespoke AI Combo" washer-dryer, and "Bespoke AI WindFree Air Conditioner," while also spreading advanced manufacturing technologies to overseas production subsidiaries. Based on its existing production infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities, Samsung Electronics plans to nurture the Gwangju plant into a global production hub covering both AI appliances and HVAC.
At the new production line, FläktGroup's core air control products—the Coolant Distribution Unit (CDU), as well as fan wall units (FWU) for data center air cooling, computer room air handlers (CRAH), and air handling units (AHU) for large buildings—are scheduled to be produced starting in early 2028.
A CDU connects a building's chiller, which is the cooling facility, with the cold plate that directly cools servers, precisely controlling the pressure and temperature of the coolant and removing impurities before supplying it to server equipment. FläktGroup has enhanced the CDU's power efficiency, redundant design, and anomaly signal detection functions in line with rising demand for liquid cooling technologies amid the increase in high-performance equipment such as AI servers.
FläktGroup is a global air control specialist with a history of more than 100 years, operating 14 production lines and 8 research labs across the United States, Europe and Asia, and developing and producing centralized HVAC equipment supplied to commercial facilities such as data centers, industrial manufacturing sites, hotels, airports and museums. The Gwangju production line being established this time will be FläktGroup's 15th global production facility and is expected to serve as a key production hub for targeting global AI data centers.
Samsung Electronics plans to provide differentiated HVAC solutions by combining FläktGroup's centralized air control technologies with the B2B connection and integrated control platform SmartThings Pro and the building integration solution b.IoT, and, on this basis, to rise as a leading company in the global HVAC market by 2030.
Kim Cheol-gi, head of Samsung Electronics' DA Division, said, "Samsung Electronics will rapidly expand the HVAC business, a future growth engine, to step up as a leading company in the global market," adding, "The establishment of the Gwangju production line will be an important foundation for securing differentiated competitiveness in the HVAC business."