FDM
FURNITURE
fdmonline.com
Ikea’s Swedwood gears
Swedish furniture
giant’s first U.S. factory
starts production.
By Karl D. Forth, Editor-in-Chief
kforth@wattnet.net
up in Virginia
Swedwood is ready to assemble
a big business in Virginia. The
Ikea manufacturing subsidiary’s
new plant has started production and
plans an official opening soon. This is
Swedwood’s first furniture production
factory in the United States.
Jorgen Lindquist, vice president
of Swedwood North America (it’s
pronounced Swede-wood) said that
production has started at the plant
gradually in stages in recent weeks.
The Danville site, about 50 miles
from Greensboro, N.C., was chosen
over a location in Lexington, N.C.
Danville had existing permits from
an earlier plant project that was not
completed, and this helped steer Swedwood to Danville, says Mike Sexton of
the Virginia Economic Development
Partnership.
A recent visit to the new plant was
part of the Virginia Wood Products
Media Tour, which also included
visits to several cabinet, millwork and
flooring companies. According to the
VEDP, Virginia has attracted some
40 major expansion announcements
related to wood products manufacturing in the 2002-2006 period, with a
total investment of more than a billion
dollars.
Swedwood acquired 209 acres in
the Pittsylvania County community of
Ringgold, just northeast of Danville
City. The company has an option to
purchase 69 more acres.
The first 930,000-square-foot building is complete, and was operational
only 12 months after construction
Swedwood
North American goals
began.
Jerry Mayo,
engineer for A.G.
Raymond & Co.,
says that Ikea’s
requirements were
combined with U.S.
standards to produce a building that
is flexible and meets
both American and EU
standards.
“It was a design-build process,”
he says. “The layout was evolving at the
same time the building was coming
out of the ground. We helped them
New Swedwood plant in
Danville, Va., is ramping
up into full production.
➤ Reduce Ikea sourcing cost
➤ Secure supply for growing with the long-range
demand development of the
➤ Reduce overall lead time site layout.”
➤ Reduce currency exposure Mayo was es-
➤ pecially involved in Reduce environmental the material handling
and transportation costs between the machine
lines and infrastructure is-
sues with heating, ventilating and
cooling, the air compressor system and
dust collection. The dust collection
continued
