An early adopter of Manitoba's Provincial Nominee Program (MPNP) continues to see positive results from the initiative.

The MPNP is celebrating 20 years of attracting job-ready skilled workers and active investors to the province while nominating them for permanent residence.

Friesens Corporation in Altona began partnering with MPNP after a 2001 mission trip to Europe yielded positive results for the print manufacturer and packaging specialist.

Tina Barkman, Human Resources Manager at Friesens, said the move was prompted by a shortage of workers in the southern Manitoba manufacturing sector.

"Altona is a small community and we compete with Winkler, Morden, Carman, and Morris," she explained. "We found that we were just recycling staff...instead of adding people to the employment pool we were just circulating them among the different manufacturing companies."

Since 2001, Friesens has participated in 5 mission trips to places like Germany and the Philippines. Looking at the most recent trips in 2015 and 2017, they have so far brought 50 individuals to live and work in Altona.

"One thing that I really appreciate about MPNP is that they look for places where there are specific skilled workers that are related to our industry," said Barkman. "The Philippines and Germany definitely have skilled workers in the print industry, and so they invite us to mission trips where these kinds of skilled individuals reside, which has been very beneficial of course."

As for the future, Barkman expects Friesens' relationship with MPNP to only get stronger as the need for production workers is ever-increasing in the area.

The Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program has recruited more than 130,000 people to this province over the past two decades. In the past 10 years alone, 38,000 nominees have arrived in Manitoba from the Philippines, more than 21,000 from India, more than 10,000 from China and hundreds of others from Germany, Israel, Korea, Nigeria, Pakistan, Ukraine, and other countries.