Exploration Products, a longtime Spokane company that sets up remote camps around the world for mining, oil, and military exploration teams, has moved its headquarters to Bellingham, Wash.


Company President Tim Myhre says he moved the company to Bellingham, to be closer to a manufacturing plant in the Vancouver, British Columbia, area where items that Exploration Products buys for its camps are made.


That plant is operated by Weatherhaven, a Burnaby, British Columbia, company that became affiliated with Exploration Products about two years ago when Exploration Products and Weatherhaven became part of a group of companies that Myhre became a partner in. As affiliates, Exploration Products and Weatherhaven reached an agreement under which Weatherhaven would supply equipment and products that Exploration Products requires for its camps.


Myhre says he recently has been spending much of his time at the Canadian production plant. He says that Exploration Products, which had been located in the Spokane Business & Industrial Park, originally had considered building its own manufacturing plant in the Spokane area, but couldnt find a suitable location. Instead, the company plans to construct a production facility somewhere along the I-5 corridor between Bellingham and Seattle.


Four of Exploration Products seven employees here moved to Bellingham with the company; the remaining three chose to leave the company.


Exploration Products also sells expedition clothing, equipment, and survival supplies through mail-order catalogs that it publishes. The company, which also has sales offices in Washington, D.C., and Tucson, Arizona, had annual sales of about $20 million last year, and employs nine people, Myhre says.