This announcement comes as Airedale’s popular and long-serving managing director, Tony Cole retired after an impressive 31 years with the company. Originally appointed by Tony, Jonas joined Airedale in 2019 to lead the newly established data center solutions team. Since then, he has moved into a senior commercial role, before taking over as general manager.
Role and responsibility
Reporting to Eric McGinnis, Vice President, Building HVAC, Jonas will be located at Airedale’s UK headquarters – the impressive, 23,000 sq meter manufacturing, research, and development facility in Leeds.
Jonas held various commercial roles spanning a 25-year career
With additional responsibility for production sites in Consett (UK), Guadalajara (Spain), Buena Vista (US), and Grenada (US), this move will see the brand become truly global, as production is expanded across several continents for optimum output, to meet the demand for the booming worldwide data center industry.
Experience
With over 20 years in the IT and data center industry, Jonas has an extensive background in data center technology and regularly speaks on the future of data center design and trends.
Prior to joining Modine, Jonas held various commercial roles spanning a 25-year career, with the latter 10 years in senior management positions. Jonas joined Airedale from Etix Everywhere (Vantage Data Centres) where he held the positions of global vice president of sales and UK country director. He also worked for Schneider Electric and Geist Global (Vertiv), amongst others.
Strategy and growth
Jonas said, “This is an exciting time to be leading Airedale and I am delighted to be appointed general manager. With exponential growth in the data center industry and the strategic realignment of our production resources across the globe, we can focus our talents, minimize waste and maximize efficiencies to allow us to deliver more of the high-quality, high-efficiency cooling solutions that are currently in demand, worldwide.”
The newly appointed general manager added, “Becoming a truly global brand is an important part of our strategy. We have a wealth of possibilities ahead of us and we are embracing the opportunities we are creating.”
Right leader to support the growth
Jonas will lead the global expansion of data center products to the US and Western Europe Eric McGinnis, Vice President of Modine’s Building HVAC division said, “Jonas brings deep experience and expertise to this role and is the right leader to support our growth strategy for our data center business. In addition to having responsibility for our UK business, Jonas will also lead our global expansion of data center products to the US and Western Europe."
"We are currently expanding our manufacturing capacity for chillers in the UK and will fully utilize our plant in Guadalajara, Spain for computer room cooling products, such as computer room air handlers and fan walls. We are also producing some of these products in the US, with plans to have full production capability in the next 12 to 18 months.”
Eric concluded, “We have superior products for the data center market and a global manufacturing footprint to support our growth targets.”