B.C. company making $4.5 million investment in Windsor

A British Columbia company is making a $4.5 million investment in Windsor with a new coffee pod manufacturing facility.

Nexe Innovations makes fully compostable, single-serve coffee pods for machines including Keurig.

“To grow a manufacturing business in BC, it doesn't work,” says president of Nexe, Ash Guglani.

“There’s tool and die makers, mold makers, automation companies. There's a lot of good partners in Windsor that will help us move our business a lot faster than what we can do in BC,” says Guglani.

The company has purchased the old JD Norman factory on Hawthorne Drive, for $4.5 million.

According to a Nexe news release, the company was in receivership, and the property on Hawthorne was initially listed at $6.5 million.

“We've already hired a few employees and we just got the keys to our place last week,” says Guglani.

He won’t say how many employees Nexe will hire in the coming weeks, or when the factory will be up and running.

But he says they will manufacture, fill and ship the pods from the Windsor factory.

“We want to be a ‘made in North America’ solution for everything we do,” says Guglani. “We don't to go overseas, it just creates delays and we want to control the quality of our product. It’s very important to us.”

Guglani says the U.S. market accounts for 90 per cent of their business.

“I think they were estimating 60 billion is the market in the US alone,” says Stephen MacKenzie, CEO of Invest Windsor-Essex.

MacKenzie tells CTV News, they were not involved in landing Nexe, but did assist the commercial real estate broker that sold the property.

Invest Windsor-Essex will be meeting with Nexe executives next week, to help them get acquainted with their new location, which includes introductions to local manufacturers.

“Automation is involved. Food processing is involved, we have expertise in that between our greenhouse industry and our food and beverage industry, including our distilleries,” says MacKenzie.

MacKenzie says they will also be introducing Nexe to researchers at the University of Windsor, for expertise that might come in handy, as the company looks to expand beyond coffee pods.

“To do like tubs. Coffee creamers. You name it. Yogurt cups. Its milk jugs. I mean it really is endless,” says Guglani.

Their factory in BC is 20,000 square feet, but the Windsor location will be just under 55,000, according to Guglani.

“We want to control our product innovation as much as we can, and the only way we can do it is by being in a city like Windsor.”