AIR was founded in 1978 by John Larson, a steamfitter in an Atwater Minnesota plumbing and heating company, Morris Eisert, an engineer for a food equipment and refrigeration manufacturer, and Jerry Jacobs, a supervisor at a large food processing plant in California. With their combined talents, they created a profitable corporation that manufactures cooling systems for produce and food processing plants and cold storage facilities.

For the first two years production was done at a small plant in Watsonville, California. In 1980, the plant was moved to Atwater, Minnesota for lower production costs and to pursue the market in the Midwest.

In 1992, AIR began construction for a new location in Excelsior, Minnesota. The new facility was built to house the sales and design staff with Morris Eisert as the president. In 1993, AIR began to double their production space in Atwater to keep up with the growing demands for their refrigeration packages. They purchased land and a building site across the street from their existing plant. With the construction of the added site, AIR then had 24,000 square feet of production space.

In the early days, AIR first started with two or three customers. The business doubled each year for the first three years. After fifteen years, AIR was seeing annual growth of 10 to 20 percent, had over 100 current customers, and employed around 70 people.

For more information please check out the following links to articles written about AIR.

• "Construction Begins on Building", Excelsior/Shorewood Sun Sailor-Wed., June 17, 1992
• "IIAR Sees New Role For Old Refrigerant", ASHRAE Journal, May 2002