Golden Wheel is one of the manufacturers Menards works with in China. That’s been confirmed. Most likely, that’s where the hand-crafted MDF buildings are made.
One other theory is that Menards also deals with one of Kader’s facilities, though Menards has never confirmed this.
Kader, of course, is Bachmann’s parent company, and Bachmann owns Williams. Because some of Menards’ freight car line appears to have been made or cloned from Williams tooling, the Kader connection is a possibility. But unless Menards says that’s the case, it’s only a plausible theory.
By the way, if you didn’t read Con-Cor founder Jim Conway’s letter (included as a link to the thread about the Affatech plant closing in China that is impacting Atlas and other model train manufacturers), you might be surprised by this fact: Globally, Kader is a major toy maker, dealing with companies such as Mattel, not merely hobby or small volume manufacturers. It wasn’t news to everyone on this forum, but Conway’s letter drove the point home for me.
Kader Holding Company’s website says Kader, collectively, has 2.85 million square feet of production space in southern China. That’s the equivalent of two dozen Walmart supercenters.
Those holdings include the Sanda Kan factory that once produced trains for as many as 70 model manufacturers until Kader decided to maintain a relationship with only a handful of them and booted out the rest.
So it would be hard for Menards not to somehow be involved with Kader. Again, just a guess.
