The Pokémon Company has bought the trading card game’s printer

Millennium Print Group, a company that prints cards for the massively popular Pokémon Trading Card Game, has been bought by The Pokémon Company. Since 2015, Millennium Print Group has collaborated with The Pokémon Company.

“Through this acquisition, The Pokémon Company International intends to further enhance Millennium Print Group’s capabilities, infrastructure, and scale in order to position the company as a preeminent trading card printer for the broader industry,” the company stated in a news release. “Millennium Print Group will continue to operate independently, but will benefit from The Pokémon Company International’s investment and industry expertise.”

Pokémon cards have been extremely popular throughout the pandemic, with The Pokémon Company officially pledging to create additional cards in February 2021 to accommodate demand. (Ebay even added a scanning capability to its app to make trading cards easier to sell.) This acquisition indicates that The Pokémon Company anticipates continued demand for Pokémon cards and other types of trading cards.

“Our goal is to grow Millennium into an even more superior, larger, state-of-the-art version of their already great organisation, benefiting not just Pokémon, but all of their consumers,” Kenji Okubo, president of The Pokémon Company International, stated in the statement.