Caterpillar Inc. announced today that it would relocate its global headquarters from Deerfield, Illinois, to Irving. The move to the company’s existing office at Williams Square Plaza in Las Colinas is a shift in the company’s century-long presence in Illinois. The heavy-machinery maker company plans to start transitioning its main office to Irving this year.

CAT’s move is “in the best strategic interest of the company,” said Chairman and CEO Jim Umpleby in a statement.

According a Reuters report, 230 employees in Illinois are expected to eventually move to the new HQ. Even with the move, Illinois will still have the largest concentration of employees, the company said.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott welcomed the move on Twitter, saying the Lone Star State is a “perfect fit for this international brand.”

CAT’s Texas presence

Since the 1960s, CAT has had a presence in Texas in several areas of its business. CAT, which hosted its bi-annual Investor’s Day in Grapevine last month, has about 120 workers already in Irving.  The Electric Power division of the company is currently run out of its Irving office.

Jason E. Kaiser is a vice president of Caterpillar Inc. with responsibility for the Electric Power Division. [Image: CAT]

Jason Kaiser, who became vice president of the EPD division last year, says the region offers “a lot of skill and a lot of people here for us to draw from.” The company says its Electric Power division is “a unique organization,” with three brands that support a variety of customers, from data centers, mining, industrial facilities, utilities, banking, and hospitals.

In a recent media tour of Caterpillar’s Irving offices, Kaiser showed off the new home base of many of the company’s businesses—including the Electric Power Division, Caterpillar Manufacturing, and more. 

In May, Caterpillar announced a new regional office at the Williams Square campus in Irving, where the company will occupy multiple floors in the West Tower, one of the 1.4 million-square-foot campus’ four buildings. 

Growth strategy

Kaiser said the North Texas talent pool is a big reason Caterpillar set up the Electric Power division in Irving. In May, the company was already seeking workers to fill 50 new positions in Las Colinas. Another reason was the location’s global access via nearby Dallas-Fort Worth Airport and Love Field. 

“We plan to grow,” Kaiser said in a Dallas Business Journal report at the time, noting that Caterpillar’s energy and transportation segment makes a new engine every two minutes. “We don’t have a target like, ‘We’re going to have so many people by this time.’ We’re really growing through the needs of the business. We have a wonderful space here to work with. We have some businesses that are growing, and so as those businesses grow, we’ll add more people.”

A drive for innovation

Caterpillar has a long history of innovation, from the first commercially successful track-type tractor to electric drive technology to autonomous solutions for mining trucks.

Caterpillar points to other groundbreaking innovations in the last decade such as advancing additive manufacturing—3D printing—to make parts closer to customers, welding simulation tech to predict materials stress, drone surveying, remote microgrid tech, virtual product simulation, and dynamic gas blending for dual fuel diesel/natural gas engines.

The company, which filed tens of thousands of patents, had expenses for research and development of around $1.7 billion in 2021, according to Statista.

The headquarters move “supports Caterpillar’s strategy for profitable growth as we help our customers build a better, more sustainable world,” said Jim Umpleby.

With 2021 sales and revenues of $51.0 billion, Caterpillar Inc. is the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, off-highway diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines and diesel-electric locomotives. The company acquired Tangent Energy Solutions, a U.S.-based energy-as-a-service (EaaS) company, in May.

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