A company you’ve never heard of is supporting the Boise area’s data-center boom
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Johnson Thermal Systems opens $55M Nampa plant, doubling output and adding 140 jobs
- Company manufactures large generator enclosures vital to backup data center power
- Surging data center demand and low power costs are driving growth in the Boise area
A little-known company in the Treasure Valley is riding the coattails of the data-center boom.
In an industrial park in North Nampa, about two miles off of Interstate 84, the company is putting the finishing touches on a 172,000-square-foot plant that will manufacture gigantic generator enclosures, a crucial but not-so-glamorous piece of a data center’s backup-power system.
The enclosures reduce noise, protect generators from the elements and, perhaps most importantly, keep data centers operating when the electricity grid fails. The enclosures are in high demand as power-hungry data centers pop up all over the country, in part to support the rapid growth of artificial intelligence.
Johnson Thermal Systems, or JTS, a Caldwell-based subsidiary of the private-equity-owned Mission Critical Group, says its $55 million plant in Nampa will allow it to double its manufacturing capacity. It broke ground on the plant in April 2024.
“We were eager to get another facility built because we have such a demand from our customers,” JTS President Greg Blake told the Idaho Statesman. “We needed the capacity.”
The company has one other plant in Idaho, on a 30-acre campus in Caldwell, and a small plant in Abilene, Texas.
“The Texas market is a pretty hot market as well — lots of data centers are going in there,” Blake said. “That’s because wherever there’s low-cost power or an abundance of power, it makes better sense to try and bring a data line into that area and do computing there than it is to try and take all that power and pull it out.”
Idaho notably has among the lowest electricity rates in the country. That’s what first drew in Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, which announced in 2022 that it would build an $800 million center in Southeast Kuna. A second $1 billion data center in Kuna is also in the works.
Blake said JTS also does work for memory-chip manufacturers, though he didn’t call out any in particular. Micron, of course, is getting closer to completing its $15 billion fab (industry shorthand for semiconductor-fabrication factory) nearby in Southeast Boise.
“They want backup power generators there as well,” Blake said. “Companies like us are very regional in nature. We handle the Northwest here. If there’s a data center project going on in Idaho, Oregon or Washington, generally it’s us that supplies the enclosures.”
The large-scale generator enclosures that JTS builds are about 14 feet wide, 14 feet tall and 60 to 65 feet long.
The enclosures are sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars and up to $1 million, Laura Noland, a spokesperson for the company, told the Statesman.
Once the steel enclosures are welded together with a double wall, the frames go through a blast booth and then a paint booth, Blake explained during a tour of the plant with the Statesman on Tuesday. It’s a two- to three-week process from start to finish.
“We take that diesel engine that would generally be built by companies like Caterpillar or Cummins or MTU, and we build a sub-base fuel tank,” Blake said. “The engine gets set on top, and then we build a sound-attenuated house over the top of it. It’s a metal enclosure that has insulation in it that will prevent the sound of that engine running from bothering all the neighbors. Generally, those engines are extremely loud.”
When an enclosure is finished, it’s loaded onto a truck and driven to a data center.
But the enclosures don’t travel well, Blake said. That’s why it’s important for the manufacturing side to be located close to the end users. He said the location of the plant — at 17645 N. Gable Ave. in the Adler Midland Industrial Park — makes it easy for large trucks to get to Interstate 84 without a hassle.
“We get out of the city here pretty quickly,” Blake said. “Unfortunately, we block a little bit of traffic when they’re going down the road.”
JTS was founded by Jeff and Sheri Johnson in 2009, according to Blake. The company mainly built refrigeration units. That’s still a small part of the business now, he said.
The Johnsons began selling off portions of the company a decade ago and were fully bought out by about 2022, Blake said. In 2023, the company was sold to Mission Critical Group, a portfolio company of Emerald Lake Capital Management, a private equity firm in Santa Monica, California.
JTS’s new plant in Nampa will add 140 jobs to the area, according to the company. Blake declined to say what those jobs pay, except to say the pay is competitive for the industry.
He said JTS did not apply for an Idaho Tax Reimbursement Incentive, which gives companies expanding in the state a tax credit of up to 30% on income, payroll and sales taxes for up to 15 years if the new jobs are full-time with pay equal to or greater than the average county wage. Several companies have benefited from the incentive, including Micron and Meta, according to the Idaho Department of Commerce.
Blake promises to treat his new employees well. The building has a gym and separate locker rooms with showers for men and women, so workers can squeeze in a workout before or after their shift. There’s also a first aid station and a large break room with food and drink options.
“Employees are the hardest thing to get,” he said. “I can get customers. But we’re competing with all these other companies in the Treasure Valley for employees. We’ve really got to take good care of them.”
Blake said another plant in the area could be on the horizon.
“We call it Nampa 1,” he said. “Because my expectation is that at some point we may need a Nampa 2.”
This story was originally published June 15, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
