Bosch to invest $360M in North American locations.

As the recent expansion of TTI across the Upstate reveals and anyone stuck in quarantine over the past year can attest, household appliances and power tools are hot business right now.

"If you think about what you were doing during the pandemic, people were busy remodeling," Bosch President Mike Mansuetti said in a June 8 press conference. "So our appliances and power tool business was up 12% from 2019."

When demand for Bosch's automotive parts wavered in 2020 and overall sales were down 15% year over year, the German company could lean on one of its many portfolio companies and divisions.

North America's consumer goods business sector climbed to $2.9 billion worth in sales,and the company ended the year with a healthy $12.3 billion in consolidated sales in North America, Mansuetti said.

It's this diversification that Bosch's North American leadership hopes to invest in with $360 million in capital expenditures across its 100 North American locations. In South Carolina alone, Bosch has a foothold in Anderson, Fountain Inn and Charleston.

"If you look at 2020, it's all about finding balance, if you will," Mansuetti said. "In 2020, our portfolio allowed us to find balance as the diversity of our business supported us through the challenges brought about through the pandemic. And as we look ahead into 2021, we will find that balance, once and again, by looking at these solutions across our broad portfolio that benefit our customers."

Charleston's manufacturing plant plans to invest approximately $80 million by 2023 to ramp up the production of its electric powertrain and electromobility efforts, while also keep abreast of the continued growth in its internal combustion engine lines.

More than $250 million will go toward mobility solutions throughout the continent in 2021, a sector that fostered $7.5 billion in sales last year.

"For the current year, we are optimistic about building upon the results of the second half of 2020 and the start of 2021, but also expect on-going challenges due to industry-wide headwinds such as the semiconductor shortage," he said in a statement following the conference.

Investment will also target technology integrated into the manufacturer's operations that rely on AIoT AI and internet of things and moves the company toward its goal of carbon neutrality.

"We are one of the winners in the transition to electromobility, and we are significantly expanding our software business by tying in artificial intelligence,"...

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