by Binh Duong, Vietnam (AP)-Lego opened a $ 1 billion factory in Vietnam on Wednesday, which says that it will produce toys without adding planet warming gas to the atmosphere by completely relying on clean energy.
The factory in the Binh Duong industrial area near Ho Chi Minh City is the first in Vietnam to be only on clean energy. Lego says that it will do so by early 2026.
It is the sixth worldwide Danish company and its second in Asia. It will use high-tech devices to produce colorful Lego stones for the growing markets in Southeast Asia.
“We just want to make sure that the planet that the children inherit inherits must be a planet that is still there. This is functional,” said Niels Christiansen, CEO of Lego, to The Associated Press.
The factory is an important factor for LEGOS to end the addition of greenhouse gases by 2050. It has a short -term goal to reduce emissions by 37% by 2032. The privately held group makes their plastic brick-based bricks and has invested more than $ 1.2 billion in a search for more sustainable alternatives. But these efforts were not always successful.
The quick industrialization of Vietnam also aims to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Therefore, more factories are needed to use clean energy. The country hopes that the 12,400 solar collectors and the work of the work of energy storage system will contribute to creating a precedent for more sustainable production.
The blocks are made from different colored plastic grains, which are melted at high temperatures and then fed into metal shapes. The highly automatic factory uses robot to make the bricks a tenth of the width of a hair and then pack it. Finally, it will employ thousands of mostly qualified workers to operate these machines. Some of them have already started working in Lego’s factory in East China after training.
The production makes up a fifth of GDP Vietnam and consumes half of the energy it consumed. It is planned to exclude your coal -fired power plants by 2040.
The Lego factory, which includes 62 soccer fields, uses the “blueprint” to make large, powerful factories sustainable and at the same time make it profitable, said Mimi Vu, founder of the consulting company, partner in Ho Chi Minh City. “Sometimes a big society like Lego is needed to take these risks. To show that we can do it … and we can be profitable,” she said.
The factory will benefit from a new 2024 rule, which is referred to as Direct Power Purchase Treaty or DPPA and enables large foreign companies to buy clean energy directly from solar and wind power producers and to meet their requirements for clean energies.
The factory is connected to an adjacent energy center in which electricity can be stored in large batteries.
“Even if the sun only shines during the day, we save the energy and can use it anywhere. This will far from covering most of the consumption of the factory,” added Christiansen.
The remaining 10% -20% of the energy requirement of the factory are fulfilled by agreements with other clean energy manufacturers.
“Lego and Vietnam, we have the same efforts. We both want to be green to play our role in the climate. And I think this with solar and battery and DPPA shows that this is possible that this can be done,” said Jesper Hassellund Mikkelsen, Senior Vice President Asia Operations in Lego, said The AP.
The company will also open a sales center in the province of Southern Dong Nai in Vietnam to operate markets in Australia and other Asian countries in which it offers an opportunity for growth. The search for the LEGO factories in regions that they deliver helps to isolate them from the tariffs ordered by US President Donald Trump, said Christiansen.
“At the moment I am probably more aware of what that means for growth in the world? Do we see the consumer mood in parts of the world or not, and what would that possibly mean?” he said.
The five buildings in the factory correspond to the standards with high energy efficiency. LEGO also planted 50,000 trees – twice as many trees that it extinguished for the factory. It is the first Lego factory to replace disposable plastic bags with paper bags for packaging.
The founder of Lego, Ole Kirk Kristiansen, founded the company as a wooden toy manufacturer before patenting the legendary plastic stones in 1958. It is still looking for a way to make more environmentally friendly plastic tiles.
Christiansen said Lego bricks in recent decades and could be reused, although this is ultimately ambition to get them out of renewable materials. He said that a third of the materials used in Lego stones came from renewable and recycled sources last year. But this is more expensive than plastic made of fossil fuels.
“It is not inexpensive at this point, but we believe that if we … support ourselves, we create a supply chain for the type of plastic materials that are not based on fossil fuels,” he said.
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