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Trade Contracting
August 29, 2006
Board game maker moving to N.S. from China
HALIFAX
A British Columbia-based board games maker is planning to move manufacturing from China to a small Nova Scotia town.
Headz Gamez International of Richmond, B.C., said it will set up corporate offices and a manufacturing plant that will employ up to 1,500 people in Parrsboro, N.S., a village of 1,200 people located about 180 kilometres west of Halifax.
Chief executive Kerry Martens, owner of the privately held firm, says the company will spend $25 million of its own money to move to Parrsboro, and build several facilities to print and assemble games — all without government help.
Martens says he’s currently manufacturing a line of brightly coloured sports games, including one sponsored by NASCAR auto racing, in Chinese factories.
He says land costs are far lower in Parrsboro than Richmond, B.C., and the company will have access to shipping routes to European markets for its games when the factory is up and running in 2008.
Martens says he’s on the verge of a huge order from “the world’s biggest retailer’’ for several million of its board games to be shipped to the U.S. and Mexico.
“We’ll sell over two million games in the European Union in our first year. That alone will keep 1,500 (people employed),’’ he said.
The company has already begun to renovate the old post office in the town and has put in an offer for 10 hectares of land in the town’s industrial park for a factory.
Town mayor Doug Robinson said the town is enthusiastic about the plan and views the company’s initial hiring of 10 people as a sign it is serious.
The company expects to begin construction on the factories by late October or early November.
CANADIAN PRESS
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