DAIKIN has announced its intention to take a leading role in large commercial air conditioning with the opening of a new $52m r&d facility to develop global products and facilitate their rapid introduction to the market.

The new facility at the Daikin McQuay Applied Development Centre in Minneapolis will be the centre for the development of screw and centrifugal chillers and other large applied air conditioning products. Daikin employs 70 staff on r&d into applied equipment at facilities in Japan, the US and Europe.

The new facility is capable of simulating ambient temperatures of -20ºC to 60ºC and testing to the differing supply frequencies and voltages of each country of the world. It will be used to develop global base models, customise them to regional requirements and launch onto the market within a short timeframe. It will call on Daikin's heat pump and inverter technologies and McQuay's applied air conditioning system technologies.

Daikin has been the world leader in unitary and VRF sales and says it now intends to take advantage of its acquisition of the OYL Group, which included McQuay, a company with the world's fourth largest share of the large-scale commercial air conditioning market, and has prepared a product development system to lead in applied air conditioning in each region of the world.