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Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/950283
COURTESY OF ARC'TERYX ApRIL 2018 BCBusiness 15 T H E M o N T H lY I N f o R M E R tmı "I'm not sure there's a strong role for government in telling companies to pay people a lot more" –p.21 A P r I l 2 0 18 INSIDE A brace for impact ... Payment plans ... Hogging and logging ... Bruce almighty ... + more A rc'teryx Equipment's massive new factory may be lean and designed for efficiency, but nothing rushes through the place. Take the Alpha SV: workers spend 192 minutes and almost 200 steps turning a bucket of parts into the popular alpine jacket. The Alpha is one of Arc'teryx's most labour-intensive products, with a $900 price tag to match. but Arc'One combines the other three facilities under one big roof—housing the equivalent of four U.S. football fields and four times as much manufacturing space as the previous factories combined—near the Fraser River in New Westminster. In a time of manufactur- ing labour shortages and the continued exodus of apparel production from North America to low-cost countries, opening a new factory in Vancouver may seem like a strange move. But for Arc'teryx, it was crucial. "We are all about mak- ing pinnacle products for the extreme end user," says Shirley home Advantage MANUfACTURING MADE IN B.C. The North Vancouver-based outdoor clothing and equipment company makes it locally, at Arc'One, the 247,000-square- foot factory and warehouse it opened in May 2016. Before that, Arc'teryx's Metro Vancouver operations were spread over four buildings: two factories, a warehouse, and a head office and design centre. HQ remains in North Van, Adventure clothing brand Arc'teryx makes most of its products offshore, but keeping a local factory is vital to the B.C. company's success by Ryan Stuart buILDING THE aRC Arc'teryx quadrupled its manufacturing footprint at home by opening the Arc'One factory Our top manufac- turing subsectors by sales in 2016 1. Value-added wood $10.3 billion 2. Food $8.1 billion 3. Apparel $4.5 billion* 4. Paper $4.2 billion 5. Primary metals $3.4 billion SOURCES: STATISTICS CANADA, BC ALLIANCE FOR mANUFACTURINg *ESTImATE