The first refrigerated trailers have rolled off the assembly line at a new plant on Ube Drive in Sarnia.
CIMC Refrigerated Trailer Company has officially been operating for nearly two weeks in the former Ube Automotive plant off Highway 402.
Chief Operating Officer Alex Wang said they celebrated their first completed trailer February 25.
"So far, our backlog is full for 2021, about 600 trailers are on our schedule," said Wang. "Our current production schedule is two trailers per day, then we are going to increase the daily output to three, four and five."
Wang said they currently have 25 employees, but are planning to hire more than 40 employees when production increases to five trailers per day.
CIMC announced last October it was investing over $5 million to convert the former UBE plant into its first Canadian manufacturing location. The company, based in China, contacted the Sarnia-Lambton Economic Partnership in 2018 as a result of an online marketing campaign. It had been considering locations in Canada that were still in close proximity to its operations in Indiana.
A new $26 million dollar plant that opened in Indiana in January, 2021 is producing around eight trailers a day, with plans to increase production to ten trailers in a few weeks.