It will be the first actual manufacturing facility at Coffee Creek Center.

And the news is huge.

Urschel Laboratories Inc.—the international leader in precision food-cutting equipment—is moving its worldwide hub from Valparaiso to Chesterton.

Just before deadline today, Urschel announced that it has entered into a purchase agreement for approximately 160 acres at Coffee Creek Center and will begin construction of a new corporate campus—including a 350,000 square foot manufacturing facility—at Coffee Creek Center.

“We are pleased that the 300-plus high-paying jobs are staying in Northwest Indiana—and equally as important—in Porter County,” President Bob Urschel said in a statement released at noon. “Chesterton and Coffee Creek Center are ideally located for our existing employees and the long-term sustainability of the company.”

The decision to move to Chesterton followed a nationwide search for a new headquarters and manufacturing location, the statement said. And Urschel employees were “prominent in the decision to remain in Porter County.”

“Our employees are our greatest asset and this move ensures we have little or no impact on them or their families,” Urschel said. “I am encouraged that we will continue to manufacture world-class products that are 100 percent made in Northwest Indiana.”

“This move, with the assistance of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, will enable Urschel to build on its more than 100-year legacy in Porter County with a state-of-the-art facility, and with the continued support of the local communities that helped build the company into a global manufacturing leader,” the statement said.

“As our business continues to grow, we have expanded our current facility 28 times over the past 40 years and this has created some operational inefficiency,” Vice-president Rick Urschel noted. “This, along with the limited land at our current facility, dictated that the family investigate the marketplace.”

“The Town of Chesterton is honored to be the chosen location for this world-class company’s new corporate headquarters campus and looks forward to working with the Urschel team,” said Chesterton Town Council Member Jeff Trout, R-2nd. “This project will continue Urschel Laboratories’ invaluable presence and contributions to the citizens of Porter County.”

Construction of the new facility is expected to begin in the second quarter of 2013, with occupancy projected for the spring of 2015.

Urschel Laboratories traces its origin to William Urschel’s design of the Gooseberry Snipper in 1910, used to remove stem and blossom ends from gooseberries, according to the company’s website.

“The Gooseberry Snipper was a grand mechanical triumph that signaled the start of a small company in Valparaiso, Ind., that would later become Urschel Laboratories Inc., known worldwide for precision-engineered size reduction equipment,” the company says.

William Urschel “continued to experiment with new ideas and invented many revolutionary machines for the food industry,” the company says. “Because of this extensive research and development, the company took on the name ‘laboratory.’ The company, to this day, is still owned and operated by direct descendants of William Urschel, and we retain the name Urschel Laboratories because of a commitment to continuous development of food-processing machines, the improvement of existing Urschel machines, and the development of innovative solutions to size-reduction applications.”

Urschel offers over 50 different modes of food processing equipment, including high-capacity slicers, dicers, shredders, milling equipment, and other food cutting machinery, while worldwide it develops processing solutions in the industries of fruits and vegetables, dairy, meat and poultry, nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and other fields requiring precision size reduction equipment.

Urschel International Limited, a subsidiary of Urschel Laboratories, has 10 branches in Europe and is headquartered in Leicester, UK. Urschel Pacific Asia comprises a series of direct offices of Urschel Laboratories across Asia and is headquartered in Singapore.