“As a group, we’ll probably be able to cope pretty well,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “We typically produce within the region that we sell.”
The company plans to invest US$1 billion ($1.35 billion) over 15 years in the complex, which will produce toys for Asia, he said. The company’s Mexico factory, and future Virginia plant, will provide products for North America, he added.
The opening of Lego’s sixth production center comes just days after the Trump administration upended global trade and financial markets by announcing the highest US tariffs in more than 100 years. The changes have left manufacturers in export-oriented countries such as Vietnam, which now faces new duties of as much as 46%, scrambling to figure out how to navigate the new global trade landscape.
“Will it mean that people get more nervous or spend less? We’ll have to see what happens,” he said.
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The Danish company sees growth in new markets as a buffer against any possible headwinds from tariffs, Christiansen said, with Lego’s growth outperforming the market over the last couple of years.
“So even if the market gets impacted a bit, I still have the hope that we can continue to gain market share and perform stronger. It won’t change our strategy.”
The Vietnam factory is located near Ho Chi Minh City in Binh Duong province. Its administrative office is adorned with a traditional Vietnamese cyclo bicycle, lanterns and a floor to ceiling mosaic of a dragon — all made with colorful Lego bricks.
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Lego aims to power the new facility with 100% renewable energy early next year. The Danish company has faced challenges in its goal of hitting net zero by 2050 after its carbon emissions jumped last year on higher product demand as a result of growth in new and existing markets. A previous effort to use recycled plastic bottles to make new building blocks was dropped in 2023.
Global manufacturers have previously urged Vietnam’s government to do more to help boost availability of clean power in a nation where coal and gas account for more than half of electricity generation. Policy changes approved last year will allow large power consumers to buy renewable electricity directly from project developers, rather than through the state-owned utility.
The plant will initially rely on renewable energy certificates bought through power purchase agreements for about 25% of its power, according to Jesper Hassellund Mikkelsen, senior vice president of Lego’s Asia operations who is overseeing manufacturing in Vietnam.
For every renewable energy certificate purchased, a company is guaranteed that someone else will generate one unit of electricity using renewables. But that doesn’t mean electricity used for a factory won’t have emissions attached to it, underscoring the difficulties companies face getting enough clean energy to meet their climate targets.
Lego expects to buy wind or solar power over Vietnam’s energy grid once it is available to ensure its complex can run on 100% renewable energy, Christiansen said during a briefing earlier Wednesday.
“I feel comfortable when I say that this factory will be run 100% on renewable energy,” Christiansen said.
A 30-hectare solar farm to be built adjacent to the factory and 12,400 rooftop solar panels will eventually provide about 75% of the energy to power hundreds of molding machines, according to Mikkelsen. Surplus solar power stored in lithium-ion batteries will keep the lights on when the sun goes down, he said.
The opening comes after Lego reported sales growing by 13% to 74.3 billion kroner ($10.8 billion) in 2024, driven by strong demand in the Americas, Europe and the Middle East.
