Province partners with Canada Goose

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/11/2015 (3614 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Canada Goose has opened a second manufacturing plant in Winnipeg that will add about 300 new jobs by the end of 2017.

With 450 employees who work at its five-year-old Bannatyne Avenue plant, the company has the potential to grow its Winnipeg workforce to 1,000.

The province is partnering with the cold-weather jacket manufacturer on training initiatives that will benefit hundreds of Manitobans, provincial Jobs and the Economy Minister Kevin Chief said.

“Canada Goose is taking the world by storm, but its biggest impact is creating good jobs for local people to earn a living for themselves and their families,” Chief said.

Canada Goose CEO Dani Reiss said the company keeps growing in Winnipeg because the conditions and support are there from local governments.

Since garment manufacturing had largely shut down in Canada, running a large sewing business in this country is not always easy, he said.

“We need more supply, because our demand has always been higher than supply,” Reiss said. “We are committed to making it here. That means owning factories, building them, training workers. No one else is doing that. It’s always exciting to be doing something no one else is doing.”

Canada Goose is settling into Winnipeg as its preferred manufacturing centre to satisfy its made-in-Canada mandate while trying to keep up with 40 per cent annual growth.

The newly opened operation on Mountain Avenue has about 80 workers on the job now in a 50,000-square-foot space. Reiss said the plan is to expand to an additional 50,000 square feet in the same building in the next 12 months.

The province’s partnership with Canada Goose will support the hiring and training of more than 300 new workers — at cost of about $700,000, plus and additional $100,000 in funds leveraged from the Canada job grant program — in such skills as garment manufacturing and workplace culture through Opportunities for Employment and Workplace Education Manitoba.

Employees will also receive on-the-job instruction from Canada Goose.

The new Winnipeg plant will make the iconic Canadian company’s classic cold-weather Arctic Tech garments, as well as some lighter-weight items.

Canada Goose continues to burnish its brand around the world, with growing demand for the $700 coats in the United States, Europe and Asia.

It will do about $300 million in sales this year. Even though the company continues to grow its production capacity — in addition to the new Winnipeg plant, the company hired an additional 200 people at a new Toronto location late last year — demand continues to outstrip supply, making any Canada Goose coat a hot commodity and a popular target for counterfeiters.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca