The company announced plans Wednesday to build a 1.7 million-square-foot plant in Virginia, which will employ nearly 1,800 people once completed in 2025. It will be the Danish company’s seventh global plant and second in North America — and the other is located in Monterrey, Mexico.
Its sales jumped 27% last year, driven by new store openings in China and the return of customers to its reopened stores. The family-owned company said it outperformed the toy industry in all major markets during the year, when its plastic brick sales totaled more than $8 billion.
“More and more families are falling in love with building Lego and we look forward to making Lego bricks in the United States, one of our largest markets,” CEO Nils P. Christiansen said in a statement.
Building a plant in the US also helps the company meet demand here, particularly when supply chains are clogged and the cost of shipping goods increases amid record fuel prices.
“Our factories are located close to our largest market, which reduces the distance our products must travel,” said Lego’s director of operations, Carsten Rasmussen, in the statement. “Our new plant in the United States and expanded capacity at our current location in Mexico means that we will be able to best support long-term growth in the Americas.”
Christiansen also noted that Virginia was chosen for the carbon-neutral plant because it allows them to “build a solar park that supports our sustainability ambitions and provides easy links to nationwide transportation networks.”
The company currently employs 2,600 people in the United States and has more than 100 stores.
– Reuters contributed to this report.
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