Mettler Toledo recently moved from a Hillsborough County facility to a new 267,000 square foot home in Lutz.

  • Facility designs, builds machines that check food quality
  • Company outgrew facility expanded in 2010
  • Company expects to employ 600 at new facility by summer

“This is huge. I mean, it’s creating, overall, almost 700 jobs – good-paying jobs,” said Pasco County Commission Chairman Mike Wells. “This is just the start.”

The facility designs, builds, and services machines used by companies to check food quality.

“In modern food manufacturing, a lot of equipment is moving around. Stainless steel pieces, once in a while, will fall off," said Mettler Toledo General Manager Viggo Nielsen. "We find that before it gets to the supermarket.” 

Nielsen said the Hillsborough facility underwent a major expansion in 2010 that Mettler Toledo outgrew faster than expected. The company went in search of a 30-acre lot – something Nielsen said wasn’t possible to find in Hillsborough County.

While they looked into sites outside the region, including in Georgia, the lot in Lutz ultimately won out.

“We had to go north to the center of gravity for our current staff, which was very important to us that we were able to move as many of the current employees as possible,” Nielsen said.

Nielsen said incentives offered by the county as well as the cooperation of officials also played a role in bringing the company here.

“It was also quality of life, housing stock,” said Pasco Economic Development Council President and CEO Bill Cronin. “From CEO-level housing to workforce housing, the talent that was already in place and the ability to train future talent in that pipeline.”

Cronin and Wells said the ripple effects of the relocation are already being seen in Lutz. They point to the construction of the Hilton Garden Inn that was built after it was learned Mettler Toledo was moving in as one example of development spurred on by the project.

“There are so many things going on around it, just because they’re coming to Pasco County,” Wells said. “It’s showing that we’re not a bedroom community any more.”

The company expects to employ 600 people by the end of the summer.