Cleveland-based Parker Aerospace, which bought the assets of SprayCool Data Systems Inc. in 2010, says it’s shutting down its Liberty Lake facility, located at 2218 N. Molter. 

Company spokeswoman Alison Dittmeier says 30 employees currently work at the 23,500-square-foot Liberty Lake facility. She says Parker Aerospace hasn’t decided yet on an exact closing date.

Parker Aerospace designs, tests, and builds systems and components for commercial and military aircraft. It operates as a division of publicly traded Parker Hannifin, a $13 billion company with more than 300 locations globally. The parent company has more than 60,000 employees, which includes roughly 6,000 overall in its Parker Aerospace division, says the company’s website.

Dittmeier said in a prepared statement she read over the telephone that Parker Aerospace will transfer thermal management systems production and research and development work performed here to the division’s facility in Mentor, Ohio.

Parker Aerospace refers to the Liberty Lake and Mentor facilities generically as thermal management systems operations. They’re part of a larger division within the company that operates under the umbrella heading of gas turbine fuel systems.

“The aerospace industry faces unprecedented challenges today in managing our business to provide competitive pricing and value,” Dittmeier said in the statement.

Parker Aerospace is offering positions in its Mentor, Ohio, facility to “several” Liberty Lake employees, though Dittmeier wouldn’t say exactly how many.

Each team member leaving the company will be provided a severance package that includes outplacement assistance and extension of current medical, dental, and vision coverage, Dittmeier said. She wouldn’t say how long the benefit extensions are scheduled to last.

In June 2013, the Journal reported that Parker Aerospace reported a slight increase in hiring, the first such increase since the company bought the assets of SprayCool in 2010, business development manager Dan Kinney said at the time.

“Parker has shown a commitment to staying here,” Kinney told the Journal at the time.

The company had hired three people in the first half of 2013 and had plans to bring on more workers by the end of 2013. The company at the time said the Liberty Lake facility employed 37 people and had two independent contractors. Employment had remained relatively unchanged from 2010 to 2013, Kinney said at the time of the reporting.

SprayCool mainly had produced electronic cooling products and has been located in Liberty Lake since 2002. The technology it used was developed by Isothermal Systems Research Inc., which was founded in Clarkston, Wash., by brothers Don and Charles Tilton in 1988 and operated there until moving to Liberty Lake.

Working largely as a defense contractor, the company grew rapidly in the 2000s, employing about 260 people in 2005, and it predicted at one time that it would expand to 1,000 employees. However, it restructured in 2007 and began doing business under the SprayCool name. Parker Hannifin bought SprayCool in 2010, and ISR dissolved as a corporation about a year later.

Kinney, who worked with SprayCool as the director of business development prior to the sale, previously had told the Journal that Parker Aerospace’s purchase of SprayCool enabled the Liberty Lake facility to supply customers with a full cooling system, as opposed to just the SprayCool equipment.

The Liberty Lake facility mostly focuses on product development and testing, using a fluid compatibility laboratory to test the reaction of different materials and liquids, and about half a dozen temperature and altitude chambers. It uses those chambers for product development and qualification, such as ensuring that cooling systems hold up at high altitude.

In the 2013 interview, Kinney said 65 percent of the work Parker Aerospace bids was commercial and 35 percent was for the military. Commercial applications include making cooling systems for passenger planes such as those manufactured by Boeing Co. and Cessna Aircraft Co.

Military work includes electronics cooling systems for planes such as the Northrop Grumman Global Hawk and Lockheed U-2, as well as other applications on military ground vehicles.