LIMESTONE – Canada’s largest commercial sign maker will open a manufacturing and assembly plant at the Loring Commerce Centre in April, creating 50 jobs.

The Pattison Sign Group, Canada’s third-largest privately held company, will open its first plant in the United States, a 40,000-square-foot facility that could employ 100 local people within two years. The company has plants and offices in Canada, Mexico and Venezuela.

“It’s fantastic news,” Loring Development Authority President Brian Hamel told his board Tuesday morning. “The Pattison Sign Group is coming to the Loring Commerce Centre.”

“I’m very excited to see this,” LDA trustee Art Thompson of Limestone said. “This is an enormous group, a company that will have a lot of ripple effect in the local economy.”

Discussions with the Canadian company started eight months ago. The Loring facility could double in size to 80,000 square feet in a very short time. The company already has an option on the second 40,000 square feet of space it may need.

Pattison makes signs for some of North America’s largest businesses, such as Esso, Labatt, Lexus, Ford, Via Rail Canada, Pepsi Co. and scores of others.

“Our growth is client-based, and the United States is where we want to grow in the future,” Rejean Pelletier, vice president and general manager of the Pattison Sign Group’s Eastern Region, said Tuesday morning at the LDA meeting. “The U.S. economy is getting hotter, and we want to get into it.

“We chose Loring because of the local work force … its proximity to Edmundston [New Brunswick] … and the economics of the aggressive offer made to us by the Loring Development Authority, the state and federal governments.

“The mentality of business and work is much the same here as it is in Edmundston, an area we know,” Pelletier said. “This is our first step in manufacturing in the United States.”

The company has two manufacturing plants in Edmundston, where it employs more than 300 people. One of the plants, a multimillion dollar facility, was opened recently.

Pelletier said most of the jobs at Loring will be in the manufacturing and assembly of signs. There will be a few people involved in administration, but most of the administrative duties will be performed in Edmundston.

He said the company would invest $1 million in equipment for the Loring plant. Renovations are expected to begin immediately, and workers will be hired starting in January. The company will use Edmundston employees with dual citizenship for the training of employees at the Loring facility.

Pelletier said all employees at Loring will be hired from northern Maine.

Don Belanger, assistant general manager and sales manager in Edmundston, said he already has 250 applications for work. A blind advertisement for people interested in working in a manufacturing plant was published last January in Aroostook County. Applicants, according to the businessman, included welders, fabricators, electricians and general workers.

“We’ve been looking at a U.S. plant for years,” Belanger said after the LDA meeting. “We needed a plant in the United States, and why not in our own back yard?

“The economics [are] great, and we can’t help but succeed with this plant,” Belanger said. “The LDA was very aggressive in pursuing us.”

The LDA was able to secure $800,000 in grants to renovate a facility for the Canadian sign maker. The money came from the federal Economic Development Administration and the state’s Department of Economic and Community Development.

The company has seven manufacturing facilities and 23 sales offices in North America and Central America. The company’s two plants in Edmundston formerly were known as Imperial Signs.

The Pattison Sign Group, the world’s largest custom electric-sign producer, is part of Canada’s Jim Pattison Group, a company with $5.2 billion (Canadian) in sales, assets of $3.1 billion and 25,000 employees worldwide.