Imperial Brown, which makes custom walk-in coolers and freezers, has invested more than $1 million in new machinery and equipment at its Salisbury facility in the past three years and plans to add a second shift there, the company said in a news release.

“The Salisbury plant is capable of doubling the maximum output of our Portland facility and will become our significant manufacturing location in the U.S.,” Rick Schermerhorn, president and CEO of the company, said in the news release.

The company recently signed a 15-year lease on the property, located on Long Meadow Road off U.S. 29, and is adding a second shift to its workforce.

Earlier this month, the company marked the third anniversary of opening the East Coast manufacturing facility, which occurred with the acquisition of the W.A. Brown & Son Co. in Salisbury. The acquisition led to the merger of the two companies, Imperial Manufacturing in Portland, Oregon, and W.A. Brown & Son.

Schermerhorn, who is based in Portland, said that in the three-year period, the company has enjoyed steady growth, with the Salisbury manufacturing facility doubling output during that time.

All of the major chain accounts serviced by Imperial Brown have approved the Salisbury facility as a manufacturing location, Schermerhorn said.

“We are committed to Salisbury,” he said. “We fully own the business. We paid off the note to the seller of the business two years early.”

Computer and telephone systems between the East Coast and West Coast facilities are fully integrated.

Schermerhorn said the company’s employee stock ownership plan remains a big plus for all 200 employee-owners. All employees participate without cost to the individual employee, he said.

With the growth of the past three years, Imperial Brown is now one of the top six walk-in cooler and freezer manufacturers in the world, Schermerhorn said.

Robert Van Geons, executive director of RowanWORKS Economic Development, said his agency’s goal is “to do everything we can to support Imperial Brown’s continued growth in Salisbury.”

“We are proud of Imperial Brown’s success and grateful for their continued investment in our community,” he said. “It is exciting to see them honor and substantially expand a corporate legacy more than a century in the making.”

Imperial Brown products are sold to temperature-management facilities for food service, biotechnology, medical and building construction industries, including restaurants and commercial kitchens, cold storage components for fish processing plants, ice makers for dam construction, wide-range testing chambers, pharmaceutical development and manufacturing, high humidity and dry chambers, robotic enclosures, and archival storage chambers for some of the most valuable and fragile documents in human history.