Sany made the announcement last week that it would invest in the centre when Georgia Governor Nathan Deal visited Sany Group’s main offices in Changsha, China.

Jack Tang, president of Sany America, said: “The new R&D centre will help Sany’s internationalisation initiatives and strengthen Sany’s competitiveness in the global market. Over the past two years, we have intensely recruited R&D talent for our North American manufacturing facility, and we will very aggressively continue those efforts to staff the new research centre,” he said.

Governor Deal arranged the trip to China in order to encourage further investments in Georgia.

Deal said: “This expansion stems not only from the success Sany already enjoys in Georgia, but from the relationship that has developed between Sany and our state as well. The talent from our academic institutions ensures that Sany will have a deep supply of the skilled workers needed to stay at the forefront of innovation.”

Deal visited Sany America’s 400,000sq ft Georgia headquarters last February to celebrate the completion of stage one of construction. Up until now, the entire site has seen a total investment of $60m.

The new building will help Sany localise its staff and its product development activities in Georgia. The site will also be used to assemble crawler cranes, rough terrain cranes, excavators and concrete pump trucks.