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Precor is expanding amid the worst economic crisis in recent memory — if it be not that not anywhere near its Woodinville headquarters.

The fitness-equipment maker will build a manufacturing plant in Greensboro, N.C., creating 142 jobs over the next three years.

The move is apportionment of a long-running southeastward ho in the midst of major West Coast manufacturers eager to tap gainful markets east of the Rockies and a more docile labor pool. Precor, which order continue manufacturing outfit in Woodinville, wish close a California plant after it builds the Greensboro affability. It be inclined be cheaper to ship its goods along the East Coast and to Europe from in that place.

“We need to be closer,” spokesman Jim Zahniser said. “We’re shipping a lot of steel.”

Other limited companies get been down the same path.

In 2007 Paccar picked Columbus, Miss., during a $400 million engine plant. The Bellevue-based truck manufacturer will close up down highway-truck production at its Renton plant in January, cutting 430 jobs, but will continue the same type of manufacturing in Ohio and Canada. A coalition official was told by dint of. the company that it is cheaper to operate in that place.

Boeing, the biggest manufacturer in the clime, also selected partners for its 787 program that built plants in the South, even though it assembles its planes here.

“In ordinary, the driver behind this relocation is unionized labor and minimum wage,” said Ali Tarhouni, an economics lecturer at the University of Washington.

That said, the Seattle area is a magnet for highly specialized and-well paid labor — of the sort that creates video games and advanced biotechnology drugs.

“It’s habitually an attractive place,” Tarhouni said. “It’s a judicial of what type of industry.”

Precor says Greensboro is an ideal locating for its new found because it is closer to its Eastern U.S. and European markets. It’s in the Interstate 85 corridor, which connects Northern Virginia to southern hubs such while Atlanta.

The region has a strong manufacturing presence, and in the past brace years attracted companies like Lenovo and HondaJet, meaning there’s a pool of skilled workers for Precor to infer from.

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