A major expansion at a Kelowna company’s manufacturing facility will allow Waterplay Solutions Corp. to pump out more products, meeting a growing global demand for splash parks.
Shanley Hutchinson, the creative manager at the long-time Okanagan company, says Waterplay is merging its corporate and manufacturing facilities to “better support” its “global efforts.”
When it’s finished in the spring of 2019, the project will result in an approximately 3,000-square-metre headquarters that will house the company’s management, sales, marketing, support, design, logistics, and manufacturing teams.
According to building permits from the City of Kelowna the new headquarters, located at 805 Crowley Ave., will cost Waterplay $2 million.
Hutchinson said one of the new facility’s crowning features will be the 15,000-litre underground water tank that will allow year-round testing for new products.
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She said the tank will be one aspect of new research and development technology that will let the company “really meet the growing demand, increase our production capacity, make way for new innovations, and then bring products to market much more quickly than have been able to in the past.”
“The demands are getting bigger and bigger on our market,” she added. “We really want to take our manufacturing facility to the next level.”
Waterplay was founded in Penticton in the 1980s, inspired by an exhibit at Expo 86.
One of the first spray park equipment manufacturers, Hutchinson said the product line was initially not much more than basic pipes that sprayed water.
But, in 2004, Vernon’s Jill White bought Waterplay, moving the company to Kelowna and setting her sights on the global market.
“It was time to take things globally, and it was time to ask how we could innovate in this industry (by looking at) new materials, new ways to spray water, and more,” Hutchinson said.
Today, Waterplay employs about 55 people, and has its parks on every continent except Antarctica. It also manufactured the parts for most of the splash parks in the Okanagan Valley, including in City Park, Ben Lee Park, and others.
Hutchinson said the expansion will eventually create new jobs at Waterplay, as the new facility allows the company to ramp up production.
“As things start to grow for us, then we’ll be adding new jobs. That’s one of the main reason for increasing our facility size,” she said.
Altogether she said the new facility will allow Waterplay to triple its production capacity, double its production workers, and increase efficiency by 50 per cent.
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