Major card printing facility for the Pokémon Trading Card Game in North Carolina lays off 800 people

Millennium Print Group, a subsidiary of The Pokémon Company International (TCPi), confirmed on Monday, September 25th that 800 temporary positions have been cut at their facility in Morrisville, North Carolina. This facility, which specializes in printing trading cards and associated materials, has been printing Pokémon cards for distribution worldwide (besides in Japan and Portugal), since partnering with TCPi in 2015. Millennium Print Group was then acquired by TCPi in April of last year for an undisclosed amount of money, with the intention to scale the company to become a larger trading card printer with a higher output capacity. An unnamed spokesperson for The Pokémon Company International assured local media outlets that there are no plans to include full-time workers in the layoffs.

No explanation was given for the layoffs, which occurred some time last week, beyond “changing business circumstances.” While Millennium Print Group does not offer exact employment numbers, they state they have between 1000 and 5000 current employees on their LinkedIn page - meaning that cutting 800 positions is no small percentage. The company recently opened a new facility in The Netherlands, and The Pokémon Company reports major increases in the number of cards printed in the last few years, so the layoffs come as an unusual event amongst considerable expansion.