British tech manufacturer to open Pasco County facility

A British technology company is opening a facility in Pasco County, where it intends to set up an assembly line and hire 30 people.

Fusion5 is taking a 5,000-square-foot building in the West Pasco Industrial Park in Odessa and will spend $250,000 on improvements and equipment.

The company will produce laptops and tablets using the Microsoft Windows Operating System that will be sold at retail locations throughout the U.S., Mexico and Canada. Its current crop of retailers includes Amazon and Walmart.

Gandhi Perla, Fusion5’s founder and CEO, says in a statement that when looking for where to expand it landed on Pasco because of the area’s technical schools and training programs.

Perla is at least the second CEO in recent weeks who has said that schools in the area and the training students are getting was a reason to move into the market.

The other was Tooey Courtemanche, founder and CEO of the construction software management firm Procore Technologies, who says the University of Tampa, the University of South Florida and St. Petersburg College are all graduating students with the skills and training the company looked for when it was considering where to open a new office.

Procore opened in downtown Tampa last year and is expecting to double its workforce in the next couple years to 160 employees.

Perla also cited the growth potential of the market as a reason Pasco was chosen.

“I knew right away that this was the right choice for our business,” he says in the statement.

The Pasco facility will be Fusion5’s second in the U.S. The other is in Frisco, Texas.

According to a Forbes profile of Perla, the company was founded in 2010 in Durham, England. It has operations in four countries and sells its products in 11 nations.   

Pasco’s EDC, which announced Fusion5’s plans, is working with the company on Foreign Trade Zone and export connections and helping it source local products, supplies and equipment, workforce data and workforce training.

According to the county, Fusion5 is taking over the space April 15. It is not clear yet when the facility will open.