COPENHAGEN, June 15 (Reuters) – Toymaker Lego on Wednesday said it will invest more than $1 billion in a factory in the United States to shorten supply chains and keep up with growing demand for its coloured plastic bricks in one of its biggest markets.
The factory in Chesterfield County, Virginia, will be the Danish company’s second in North America and seventh worldwide, after it announced a new factory in Vietnam last year. read more
The investment is in line with a decade-old strategy of placing production close to its key markets, which the company says has been beneficial as the global retail industry faces pandemic-related supply chain issues. The plant will also be carbon neutral.
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“Our strategy to be close to our core markets has only been confirmed recently,” Chief Operations Officer Carsten Rasmussen told Reuters.
The toy market is characterized by large seasonal fluctuations, while more than half of the company’s products in stores are new items, he said.
“It’s difficult to predict what children and adults want to buy for a birthday or for Christmas. So the reaction time is very worthwhile to make sure we have the right products on the shelves,” said Rasmussen.
The factory will be powered by renewable energy produced at an onsite solar park, the company said.
Lego has pledged to replace oil-based plastic bricks with ones made from sustainable materials by the end of the decade.
The 160,000-square-meter factory is scheduled to be operational in the second half of 2025 and will employ more than 1,760 people. Lego closed a smaller factory in Connecticut in 2006, and the U.S. market is currently supplied from a factory in Mexico.
“The U.S. market has done really well in recent years. We see huge potential in the United States and throughout the Americas,” said Rasmussen.
The company now employs around 2,600 people in the United States, where it operates 100 stores.
The family-owned company outpaced growth in the toy industry last year, with sales growing 27% to 55.3 billion Danish crowns ($7.8 billion). The company is also investing in increasing capacity at existing factories in Europe and China. read more
Lego produces roughly 100 billion bricks each year and employs around 24,000 people worldwide.
($1 = 7.0998 Danish crowns)
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Reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Mark Porter
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
General view of Wujek Coal Mine is seen during sunset in Katowice, Poland October 16, 2018. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel
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DAVOS, Switzerland, May 26 (Reuters) – NN Group NV (NN.AS) expects to accelerate its deadline to exit coal investments, now set at 2030, due to fears about Europe reverting to burning the fossil fuel, the Dutch insurer’s CEO David Knibbe said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum.
“We do run the risk because of a lack of gas and oil that it is being replaced by coal produced in other European countries,” Knibbe told Reuters in Davos on Wednesday.
“Geopolitically we understand the sanctions, but from a carbon footprint, that is not a good thing,” Knibbe said.
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Knibbe said the insurer had not yet decided on the new deadline for phasing out its coal investments.
World leaders gathered in Davos this week worried that market gyrations would disrupt the transition to green energy and that companies would fail to meet their goals to reach net zero in the coming decades. Some countries have already turned to coal to meet their energy needs. read more
NN Group, with roughly 200 billion euros in assets under management ($214 billion), is also making its definition of a company involved in coal stricter, Knibbe said, so that even those with small exposure could be subject to divestment.
Climate activists have long lobbied investors to back away from supporting the heavily polluting coal industry.
“We cannot engage on everything, but coal is high on our list as an engagement topic,” Knibbe said, adding that the longer it takes to reduce carbon footprints, the more the insurance industry would have to charge for insurance.
“The longer it takes … we will see the premiums increase,” he said.
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Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in Davos; Editing by Alexander Smith
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.