Lego reported big gains during the pandemic as consumers turned to its building sets for entertainment during and after lockdowns, reported the New York Times. Its revenue jumped 27% in 2021 to $55.3 billion Danish krone, or about $8.06 billion, up from $43.7 billion Danish krone, or about $6.36 billion, the previous year, according to the Times.

Editor in chief of PlasticsToday since 2015, Norbert Sparrow has more than 30 years of editorial experience in business-to-business media. He studied journalism at the Centre Universitaire d'Etudes du Journalisme in Strasbourg, France, where he earned a master's degree.

Construction will commence this fall, with production projected to start in the second half of 2025. A temporary packaging site will open in an existing building nearby in early 2024 and create up to 500 jobs.

Other DIY projects on the channel include a CNC router, spot welder, and — you guessed it — a Mandalorian-inspired flamethrower. I didn’t watch that Action Box video, but I would be deeply disappointed if at some point during the step-by-step instructions, one of the fellows didn’t say: “This is the way.”

The Virginia factory will be the Lego group’s seventh factory globally and its first in the United States. The company’s manufacturing site in Monterrey, Mexico, currently primarily supplies the US market. Lego said that it will be expanded and upgraded to meet growing demand for Lego products. The company also recently announced that it would expand factories in Europe and China and build a facility in Vietnam.

Lego announced today that it plans to invest more than $1 billion to build a new factory in Chesterfield County, VA. Once completed, the 1.7-million-square-foot facility will employ more than 1,760 people over 10 years, according to Lego.

The video on the Action Box channel on Youtube describes the step-by-step process for building the Injekto molding machine, with the operative word being simplicity. You won’t need a machine shop at home, and you can even build the mold itself using a DIY CNC machine. Instructions for building one also are on the Action Box channel.

“This is an exciting step for the Lego Group,” said CEO Niels B. Christiansen. “More and more families are falling in love with Lego building and we are looking forward to making Lego bricks in the US, one of our largest markets. The location in Virginia allows us to build a solar park, which supports our sustainability ambitions, and provides easy links to country-wide transportation networks. We are also looking forward to creating fantastic employment opportunities for the people of Virginia.”

The Action Box project apparently came out of the COVID-19 lockdown, when the two hobbyists spent their “leisure time building some crazy machines for the home shop.” They decided to document their builds and, through their videos, hope to “spark ideas in other young and innovative entrepreneurs.”

Construction will begin this fall in Chesterfield County, with production projected to start in the second half of 2025.

Step-by-step instructions for building the desktop DIY injection molding machine are on the Action Box channel on YouTube.

If you’re the type who likes to bring their work home with them, that can be problematic when you’re in the injection molding field. Those machines won’t easily fit into your average home workshop, let alone through your front door. A couple of hobbyists in Canada have a solution — a DIY injection molding machine that can fit on almost any desktop.

The factory will be designed to operate as a carbon-neutral facility, with 100% of its day-to-day energy needs matched by renewable energy generated by an onsite solar park. The site also will be designed to minimize energy consumption and use of non-renewable resources, said the Denmark-based toymaker.