As it turns out, what may at one point have seemed like a bit of a fad is developing a cult following of its own, with many outdoor markets opting to erect permanent infrastructure that allows for year-round gathering, shopping, dining, and fun. Local fairs are also good for the economy, providing what researchers refer to as the multiplier effect—a positive booster effect that money spent locally and returned into the local economy has on the overall health of local businesses and communities.

Earlier this year, the Digital Journal reported via Industry Research that these typically large events are here to stay. As projections indicate enduring growth, existing and prospective organizers continuously explore how to make fairs and festivals pay, how to make their guests happy, and, of course, how to keep them safe. We believe that this fast-evolving business format is worth a closer look.

The music of money…
In 2022, music festivals generated an estimated total of nearly USD 2.5 billion worldwide. According to projections, that will more than quadruple over the next five years—expansion akin to an economic explosion, considering that this income currently relies mainly on ticket and stand sales. The world’s biggest single pre-COVID earner was, according to statistics, the Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, California, which saw nearly USD 30 million in gross earnings in 2019, its eleventh year.

Featuring big-label artists as diverse as the Foo Fighters, Donny Benét, and Venus & the Flytraps, the festival will take place again from August 11 to 13 of this year. One way its organizers are expanding its earning potential is by allowing festival goers to upgrade their overall experience through a selection of limited premium options like VIP access, boxes, cabanas, and Golden Gate Club membership which brings a long list of exclusive privileges ensuring optimum comfort.

As the second-most profitable music festival in the world, according to 2019 reports, the Life is Beautiful Festival in Las Vegas costs USD 150 for a bottom-of-the-range ticket and USD 3350 (excluding fees) per person for three days of all-inclusive VIP partying. That includes access to the artists’ lounge, front-row seats, daily food vouchers, and more.

Looking at these two world-leading events, the secret of profitability seems to reside in maximizing guests’ experiences with a richness and diversity of choice, with comfort and exclusivity guiding the price tags.

… and the money of markets
When it comes to the wholesome and earthier farmers markets, participating vendors report earning anywhere between USD 20,000 and USD 50,000 annually, depending on their products of choice and crowd attendance.

In 2019, the number of such markets in the United States was estimated to exceed 8,000, while a 2020 census reflects Canadian fairs numbering just over 4,000. In 2019, the revenue from Canadian markets was headed toward CAD 1.5 billion.

As the demand for fresh produce—especially organic—and homemade goods grows internationally, farmers and other producers are increasingly using market stalls to sell to the public directly, with a hike of over 30 percent in organic fruit and vegetable sales secured in this way.

According to 1000towns.ca, Canada’s favourite farmers markets include Coombs Old Country Market in British Columbia; Cochrane Farmers Market in Alberta; Cochrane Farmers Market in Ontario; and Big River Farmers Market in Saskatchewan. Together, these and many others are helping to provide food security for people across Canada.

How it’s done
Naturally, hosting such public events involves more than erecting marquees and charging money at the door. The initial cash outlay may include costs for market research, overall set-up costs, permits, and insurance. Costs of running festivals and markets also include hiring a manager, the venue rental, the fee of legal advisors and insurance, marketing, administration, technical and manual service support, branding, and smaller basic items like office materials.

How public gatherings are hosted has changed since the advent of COVID. As a result, there’s been an increase in people’s awareness of personal space and sanitation standards. In addition, initiatives like the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) in Canada are driving a new approach to meeting the needs of all guests and visitors. The act provides guidelines on how to make indoor and outdoor gatherings safe and comfortable for the one out of seven people who currently have some form of physical disability, as projections are that this ratio will hit one in five well before 2040.

Beyond good food, good music, and good company, it’s good to avoid crowded affairs by ensuring that there’s enough space for everyone. In the United States, the recommended space per capita for indoor fairs and festivals is two to four square meters—a good guide, remembering that weather conditions may change and an outdoor event may become an indoor one at short notice.

Important info
Ontario.ca provides good information on successfully preparing outdoor spaces for public gatherings. Some other important aspects to consider include well-designed parking with easy entry to the venue and seamless access to washrooms, pay points, and the like. In addition, information should be easily accessible. Questions about shuttles and public transport access, with information on routes, times, and whether or not comfortable waiting areas are provided, should all be answered online or via printed media.

Moreover, unimpeded freedom of movement for attendees and staff should be carefully planned and provided for before setup begins. When it comes to the layout of seating, consideration for service animals should also be made alongside ramps where necessary. Some venues reserve dedicated areas for people with service animals, while others incorporate them into the overall mix with enough space around the owner’s seat for the animal to settle down in.

While every gathering space should, first and foremost, lend itself to the event at hand, a new trend in market and festival organizing is to create pockets of “quiet” spaces within the bustle of gatherings where people can rest, re-center, feed babies if need be, or just reflect for a moment.

Well-thought-out protection from the elements is also important for safety and comfort, as is good access to food stalls. Considering that some guests will arrive with mobility devices, it’s advisable to ensure that the ground is solid and safely traversable throughout the fair or festival space and that the layout is easy to navigate. Similarly, signage should be in large letters and simple fonts that are legible at a distance and easy to understand.

As we all know, public safety is a growing focus and the planning of festivals and fairs should heed this. While implementing basic safety principles, it’s good to remember that easy access to information is an effective safety feature of any event. It’s best to have evacuation plans, exit maps, directions to medical assistance, and similar available on multiple platforms in more than one place. Websites, large signs, brochures, pamphlets, and booklets are all ways of providing easy access to potentially life-saving information. It’s also considerate to have a sign language interpreter on staff.

Whether planning large or small fairs or festivals, ensuring there’s enough experienced staff to assist visitors in navigating the venue improves the overall experience and ensures return customers—because, in the end, humans are relatively easy to please. Make us feel safe, keep us well fed and watered, add some great company and a few good tunes, and we’re prone to perfect contentment. And if you do it well, who knows? We may part with even more hard-earned cash in exchange for the fine hospitality.

The post Come One, Come All<p class="company">The Exuberant Business of Fairs and Festivals</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

Nestled in the heart of the state, Berlin is ideally located for business. “We are the geographic center of Connecticut,” says Mayor Mark Kaczynski. “It’s central for businesses to locate there, easy for them to get around and do their business anywhere in Connecticut, Massachusetts, or New York.”

The town sits roughly halfway between New York and Boston, at the hub of the regional road network, which includes interstates and north-south state highways. “We’re near all the major highways,” says Economic Development Director Chris Edge. “We’re about an hour and a half to both New York City and Boston by car and by truck,” and, with the recent upgrades to the New Haven-Springfield Commuter Rail Line, New York City is just a short train ride away.

This enviable location provides access to a large pool of talent, as well as making it easy to transport goods to and from Berlin. No wonder Berlin has attracted regional and national behemoths, including Home Depot, COMCAST, Eversource, and Assa Abloy.

Despite becoming a business center, Berlin has managed to keep its small-town, New England charm, making it a great place to live as well as to work. “Berlin began as a farming community,” says Mayor Kaczynski. When he was growing up there, bucolic dairies dotted the countryside, and residents enjoyed ice cream made with fresh cream from local shops.

In recent years, as the town attracted more residents and businesses, it has shifted from a farming community to a suburban one but has maintained its original attributes—along with a handful of its original farms. “Since we were a former farming community, we kept a lot of open space,” the Mayor says. This includes “over 2,000 acres of open space that the town has purchased for walking trails, parks, and playing fields. It’s just a great suburban community.”

The strong local economy provides the resources for efficient public services and “a fabulous school system,” he says. “We fund it quite well, so they do well.” Town-wide events and amenities, from the Berlin Fair to local sports teams, bring locals together. “It’s just a wonderful community, with very friendly folks,” he says. “We’re very, very lucky.”

A deliberate and thoughtful focus on economic development has brought a number of diverse sectors to town, from manufacturing and aerospace to medical devices and construction. “In the last six to seven years, we’ve really revamped our economic development program, which has attracted a lot of businesses to town,” Mayor Kaczynski says. “We have seen, over the last six years, maybe a hundred million dollars of investment in town.”

Relatively low taxes have been one enticement, particularly during challenging times. “We’ve kept the town taxes reasonable,” he shares, “and we’ve kept our debt low.”

Implemented under Mayor Kaczynski’s leadership, the town’s tax incentives have been strategically planned to be advantageous for Berlin and for businesses. “What we’ve done is tiered them from three years up to 10 years,” Edge explains. “So essentially, the more you spend, the more you get.”

“A lot of business has discovered Berlin and moved to Berlin from surrounding towns just because of our attractive incentives,” Mayor Kaczynski adds. “The government, the town hall, has been much more receptive, helping with building permits and planning and zoning. We changed the attitude because we had a little bit of a reputation going back ten to fifteen years [that] Berlin was business-unfriendly. It’s completely changed; it’s 100 percent different and business-friendly now, and certainly, our economic development reflects that.”

Berlin’s economic development plan emphasizes new development, both from the ground up as well as in the form of large expansions of existing buildings. “That has really worked well and has helped bring in firms that really make up the fabric of the community and add to what’s already here,” says Edge.

This focus on maintaining a strong local business environment was evidenced throughout the pandemic. “During COVID, about eighty percent of our daytime population never stopped working,” he says. It helped that a sizable portion of the local economy included essential workers, the largest being Eversource Energy and people working in the construction and manufacturing sectors. In fact, the town is home to around 45 manufacturing companies with 20 or more employees.

Remarkably, Berlin’s steady stream of investment did not stop during the COVID shutdown. “Through the pandemic, we’ve had eighty-four new ribbon cuttings in Berlin,” Mayor Kaczynski says. “Mom and pop businesses [and] manufacturers have moved to town from surrounding towns.”

“A lot of people rediscovered what was in Berlin,” Edge affirms. Quarantine created new demand for local offerings, which launched a slew of restaurant openings. “We had more restaurants open up during COVID than close,” he says.

“Small businesses in particular opened up, and they have done well and are thriving,” Mayor Kaczynski adds. “The fortitude that these small business owners had to open during COVID—nobody knew what was going to happen with COVID, and they’ve all done well, and they keep moving forward.”

Now, the post-pandemic landscape looks even more promising. “We’ve seen a lot of the investment that was planned before COVID go forward,” Edge says. “We currently have four major projects, three of which are mixed-use with commercial and residential components. We have about 400 apartments under construction including Steele Center @ Farmington Ave which is an $18 million Transit Oriented Development project by the Berlin train station.”

Located right next door to the high-speed rail station, the Steele Center @ Farmington Ave project brought together several dormant town-owned parcels and initiated collaboration between the state of Connecticut, four different other state agencies, and a private developer. “We’ve all come to the table to problem solve, help establish a town center that was missing in town and generate commerce,” says Tony Valenti, Principal of Newport Realty Group, the developer of Steele Center. This new, walkable town center has created more foot traffic and brought in new places to eat, drink and shop, giving locals more opportunity to gather as a community.

The three-story Steele Center project includes 70 market-rate apartments and approximately 15,000 square feet of commercial space spread over two and a half acres. “So for a suburban community, it’s a very dense development, but the nice thing is it fits the community,” Edge says. “We worked very, very hard to make sure that the scope, size and look fit exactly what we saw for the future of Berlin.”

In addition to the new restaurants which opened during the pandemic, Berlin has welcomed a brewery and a locally owned coffee shop. The town continues to encourage the opening of new restaurants, particularly those that offer residents a “diversity of tastes,” says Edge. “We had been a place that has had pizza and Americana for years,” but now the town is welcoming everything from Mediterranean and Thai cuisine to a brand new Gastro Pub. And the efforts to attract a wide variety of eateries will continue.

Many former Berlin businesses are even returning to town, eager to take advantage of this new, business-friendly environment. For example, an HVAC contractor and an electrical contractor have both recently come back to the community. The former bought a 30,000-square-foot building and brought 100 employees and 75 trucks with the business. The latter built a 10,000-square-foot building and has been approved to build another 10,000 square feet.

“Those are the kind of things that we’re seeing,” Edge says. “I see that as turning the corner. We’ve been able to say, ‘Look, it’s a great place to be. We’d love to have you back again.’”

The return of these contractors, while making a significant impact in their own right, also demonstrates a larger trend. “When you look at just those two, those are pretty major investments,” Edge says. “They brought back the jobs, the equipment and their love of Berlin.”

Indeed, there are still opportunities for businesses eager to take advantage of all that Berlin has to offer. “We have the land to develop, although it’s filling up quickly,” Mayor Kaczynski says.

With town leadership eager to keep welcoming new enterprises for the benefit of both residents and business owners, a new campaign sums up the town’s thriving business environment perfectly: ‘It’s all in Berlin.’

The post Business is Booming in Berlin<p class="company">Town of Berlin, Connecticut</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

The Centre stands next to Province House, site of the 1864 Charlottetown Conference which led to Canadian Confederation in 1867. The 1864 Conference also led to the Centre’s opening by Queen Elizabeth II, on October 6, 1964, the 100^th anniversary of the Conference.

It was the first of several Canadian cultural institutions built in Canada whose openings coincided with the 100^th anniversary of Confederation itself in 1967 or within a few years thereafter, such as the National Arts Centre in Ottawa in 1969. “But this institution was unique in that each province contributed $0.15 per capita, a figure matched by the federal government, to build the Centre with 30 cents from every Canadian,” Bellamy says.

The architect for Confederation Centre of the Arts was Dimitri Dimakopoulos, whose modern Brutalist design was selected from 47 submissions. Its pavilions include a 1,100-seat theatre on two levels, with state-of-the-art technology to support world-class productions. In 2022 it was renamed the Sobey Family Theatre in recognition of longstanding support from the Sobey family since the 1960s, and their recent $1.25 million Leadership Gift toward the Centre’s $65 million revitalization project. The renovation is being designed by the architectural firm of Abbott Brown, with work expected to begin in Fall 2024.

The Centre also houses a national art gallery, an outdoor amphitheatre, the multi-purpose 270-square-metre Memorial Hall, and until recently, the provincial library, which has moved across the street to the former post office building, providing expansion opportunities for programming in the vacated South Pavilion.

Musicals and more
Confederation Centre of the Arts has developed approximately 85 original musical theatre productions since opening in 1964. In 2022, it produced and presented the world premiere of Tell Tale Harbour, a musical theatre adaptation of the Ken Scott film, The Grand Seduction. The show starred Canadian singing legend Alan Doyle and propelled box office sales to the highest level in the Centre’s history. Other notable original productions have included Evangeline, Belles Soeurs, Dear Rita, The Dream Catchers, and Epekwitk Mi’kmaq Voices, to name a few.

Best known internationally is Anne of Green Gables–The Musical™, based on the 1908 novel by Lucy Maud Montgomery. This legendary musical premiered on The Charlottetown Festival main stage in 1965 and went on to become the world’s longest-running annual musical, performed each year until 2019, with performances in 2020 and 2021 cancelled due to COVID-19.

The long-time favourite returned in 2022 and will continue to be presented biennially, with the next performance in 2024 coinciding with the 150^th anniversary of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s birth and the 60^th anniversary of the Centre’s opening. But the iconic musical, which has toured Canada and presented a lively facet of Canadian culture to audiences in London, New York, Adelaide, and at the 1970 World’s Fair in Osaka, is far from being the only one, as the Centre continues to present new work .

In the 1970s, to increase performance space, the Centre acquired a movie theatre across the street and turned it into The MacKenzie Theatre, a 180-seat cabaret-style venue now jauntily renamed The Mack.

Although the theatre was originally only opened in summer for The Charlottetown Festival, and closed in winter, that eventually changed with other performances offered year-round—dance, comedy, and concerts have featured diverse artists ranging from Blue Rodeo, Alan Doyle, and Rick Mercer, to the P.E.I. Symphony Orchestra, Colin James, and Matt Anderson.

Other activities, including entertainment in the outdoor amphitheatre, dance and music theatre education, the Heritage Players Historic Walking Tours, a summer Young Company for theatre, The Dream Catchers, a Canada 150 Signature Event which celebrated Indigenous culture, and the annual Symons Medal Presentation and Lecture, are initiatives that fully live up to the Centre’s mandate to offer compelling and culturally relevant programming.

Economic impact
Bellamy says that pre-pandemic, the Centre completed an economic and cultural impact study. “Four big numbers came out of that report,” he shares. “We have an impact of $27 million to the provincial GDP; we create $6.4 million in tax revenue, $16.4 million in labour income, and more than 400 full-time equivalent jobs. The Centre is a huge economic driver.

“The Centre brings about 1000 people downtown every day in the summer, people who dine at one of the dozens of restaurants within three or four blocks of the centre. I think people don’t expect an arts organization to have such a big economic impact, but that’s one of the unique things about Confederation Centre of the Arts—with the art gallery and theatre, we are a driver of a lot of tourist activity, and we are happy to play our part alongside the many other incredible businesses and attractions in Charlottetown and throughout P.E.I.”

In 2008, the Centre, which annually attracts more than 100,000 patrons to performances, gallery exhibitions, heritage programs, and other events, received the Business of the Year Award from the Tourism Industry Association of Canada.

A silver lining
Although main stage productions were cancelled in 2020 and smaller shows were offered in 2021, some departments at the Centre remained open, providing activities in the outdoor amphitheatre and the Confederation Centre Art Gallery.

The Art Gallery has six exhibition spaces on three levels. “The Centre houses a significant permanent collection of contemporary Canadian art from 1964 to today,” Bellamy says, speaking of the collection of 17,000 works—paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculptures, documents, and digital works. The collection is featured in curated exhibitions, installations, and academic or educational events throughout the year.

Adds Davies, “Another part of our pandemic story was the generosity of our sponsors who stuck with us, even when we couldn’t do certain programming. We have sponsors who are from P.E.I. and national organizations supporting us, who supported us through the pandemic.”

Work did continue during the pandemic with the downtime used “to accelerate the Centre’s digital capacity in terms of high-quality video production and online content, and that is a silver lining because now we have strong capacity in that area,” Bellamy shares. “The pandemic also provided us with time to consider the future, our identity as a National Historic Site, and the role we play in Canada.”

Renewal and transformation
“We did a lot of soul searching,” he continues, “and the Centre landed on a new direction for our role in the national cultural landscape. Whereas the origins of Confederation Centre of the Arts were as a monument to the 1864 Conference and the Fathers of Confederation, our current role is to facilitate the interpretation of Confederation and the evolving identities in Canada, through the arts and through convening for discourse such as we do during the Symons Medal Presentation and Lecture,” he says.

“The Centre empowers artists from all cultural communities, with particular attention to Indigenous voices and those of newcomers to Canada. We want to ensure all communities have a voice on these stages, in the art galleries, and in conversation with one another. What we heard when we brought stakeholders together defined a direction which builds on past successes and charts a path for the future.”

Three areas of importance emerged following these discussions. Firstly, it was agreed that the Centre needs to expand its arts education programs, which will be done through the establishment of an Arts Academy that will house existing programs in dance and musical theatre as well as new programs for production skills, arts administration, cultural management, and other forms of training in the cultural sector. Professional training programs will vary in duration from one or two weeks to months-long residencies.

Secondly, the discussions identified that the Centre needs to do more Heritage programming. The starting point for this is the Symons Medal Presentation and Lecture, named in honour of Thomas Symons, the founding president of Trent University and a leading scholar in Canadian studies and human rights. The Symons Medal was launched in 2004 and is awarded annually to someone who has made a significant contribution to Canadian life in any field— including politics, science, art, or literature. Past winners include Bob Rae, David Suzuki, Louise Arbour, Murray Sinclair, and Antonine Maillet.

2023 marks the 19^th anniversary of the Symons Medal, and the program has been expanded to include the Charlottetown Forum. This two-day gathering following the Symons Medal presentation will provide an opportunity for the public to gather with leaders from across the country to discuss issues of importance to all Canadians such as reconciliation, the environment, the economy, and how we move forward successfully. Dates of the inaugural Charlottetown Forum are November 9-10, 2023.

Thirdly, it was determined that the Centre can play a more significant role in the creation of new and original work for theatre and art in Canada. An Arts Innovation Hub will be established by re-organizing the former library space and adding a significant extension onto the South Plaza along Richmond Street. Changes to the building are being done with care, to introduce natural elements of wood and light while still maintaining the historic integrity of the original structure. The spaces created will facilitate theatre creation spaces for development of new theater work, as well as artist-in-residence studios and new learning spaces for community programming in visual and performing arts education.

Building on success
“It’s ambitious and exciting,” Bellamy says, “but what I like most about it is that these priority areas came from conversations with stakeholders in the local and national community, including staff here at the Centre, who provided critical input about how we can address decades-old challenges such as insufficient learning spaces or accessibility barriers.”

Concerning the facility itself, the designs call for retrofitting the building to make it more energy-efficient, with significant interventions such as solar panels, solar chimneys, and new insulation and HVAC systems that meet modern environmental standards. In the 1960s, mobility issues were not a priority, and as a result, there exist in the present-day Centre too many barriers to accessibility. The architects are working to meet Rick Hansen Foundation standards for Accessibility, adding elevators, ramps, and street level entry, and including auditory and visual enhancement for hearing- and visually-challenged guests. The Centre will raise significant private funds for the renovations and has also applied to federal, provincial and municipal governments for investment into the project.

“The architectural designs include significant reduction of GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions and improvements to energy efficiency, and we intend to share information about the improved carbon footprint of the site with visitors as a permanent feature,” Davies says. This is another way the Centre is showing leadership in environmental sustainability, an issue important to all Canadians.

The Charlottetown Festival, Summer 2023
While these plans are developing, summer is here and so are the tourists, heading across the Confederation Bridge to P.E.I. and downtown Charlottetown.

Running all summer in the Sobey Family Theatre are two plays: MAGGIE is a new Canadian musical co-created by award-winning recording artist Johnny Reid and Matt Murray. The originating producer of Come From Away, Michael Rubinoff, is producing MAGGIE with Reid. Confederation Centre of the Arts is presenting MAGGIE in partnership with Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton, Ontario, where it premiered in April.

Also in the Sobey Family Theatre is The Play that Goes Wrong, which has been hugely successful in London’s West End and off-Broadway in New York. The play stars P.E.I. actors in the leading roles while introducing never-before-seen technical trickery to the stage!

The Centre’s cabaret venue, The Mack, boasts two cabaret-style shows: The Music of Johnny & June (Johnny Cash and June Carter), starring Island talents Jacob Hemphill and Melissa MacKenzie, and I’m Every Woman, a musical revue featuring several talented singers performing inspired songs of legendary artists like Aretha Franklin, Dolly Parton, Whitney Houston, and more.

Visitors to Confederation Centre Art Gallery are in for an unparalleled treat in summer 2023 with the presentation of Generations: The Sobey Family and Canadian Art exhibition. This exhibition, featuring notable pieces from the private collections of several Sobey family members, was curated by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection and has been touring significant galleries across Canada.

“This important collection includes significant work by a number of Canadian masters including members of the Group of Seven, Emily Carr, Kent Monkman, and Jean-Paul Riopelle, among others,” Bellamy says. “We’re extremely excited to be presenting it here at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery for the entire summer.”

For this cultural institution, the summer ahead—and the future—certainly look bright indeed.

The post Making an Impact With Arts and Culture<p class="company">Confederation Centre of the Arts, Charlottetown, P.E.I.</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

Ecocert has the knowledge, expertise, and proven processes to be a trusted certification partner, and with more than 80,000 clients worldwide who share this belief in sustainable systems of production and consumption, its immense positive impact continues to grow.

For the good of Canada
Ecocert Canada was founded in 1994 as a proud subsidiary of the Ecocert group. A woman-owned organization, it shares the same dedication to models of fairness, equity, and sustainability and supports more than 5,000 Canadian companies in their sustainable transformations.

As Fabien Jouve, Division Manager of Client Relations with Ecocert Canada explains, “The mission at Ecocert is to support companies and people putting in place good practices for the planet and its people, to help our partners promote the ‘good stuff’—the good products and the good things they’re doing while they’re making that product.”

Ecocert works tirelessly to improve environmental and social outcomes through its certification, consultation, and training services. As a third-party auditor and certification body, its origin was in organic certification but today there are more than 150 different certifications offered, bringing the highest level of standards to clients in the agri-food, cosmetics, textiles, forestry, and homecare sectors.

“It goes well beyond organic,” says Jouve. “Organic is our core, it is our identity, but some people want to go beyond that to put in regenerative practices that go beyond organic. We have those options. There are many services that Ecocert can provide for the same mission, to support companies putting in place good practices for the planet and the people.”

Some of the leading certifications offered are Organic Agriculture Canada under the Canadian Organic Regime (COR); Global Good Agriculture Practices (GLOBAL G.A.P.); and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP); Fair Trade certification with Fair for Life (FFL); as well as regenerative agriculture, carbon neutrality, corporate social responsibility, and many others.

Driven by expertise
As subject-matter experts in organic farming, fair trade, sustainable agriculture, food quality and safety, corporate social responsibility, biodiversity, and climate change, the team at Ecocert Canada offers start-to-finish support.

“We are here to make it happen, to deliver support. We are part of an ecosystem,” says Jouve. The ecosystem begins with front-loading clients with information and resources to ensure their understanding of the requirements. It starts with navigating the available certifications to identify which will best facilitate the achievement of the client’s sustainability goals.

“We deliver a lot of information before even having a consultation with the client. That’s the approach,” says Jouve. “We do not have any application fees; people call us, we inform them and then they choose to engage, to be involved in the path that they find most suitable for their products and their processes.”

Ecocert Canada has a wealth of resources, including videos and training modules, to bring clients on board and engage them from the outset. Throughout the process, the organization promises exceptional customer support to ensure success. “If they have any questions, any technical questions during the process, we help them. We make sure that all the inputs they use are compliant, that they are doing all the documentary evaluation, so when all of that is verified, we can go to audit the client,” explains Jouve, and only then is the client invoiced for services rendered.

Invoices are issued when Ecocert Canada is confident that the client is ready. As Jouve states, “That’s part of the difference we bring to the sector. When people commit to making this change, we make sure that we support them well.”

Guided by values
From the preservation and optimal management of available energy and natural resources to improved product quality, innovation, safety, and outcomes for end users, Ecocert Canada and its clients play a collective role in addressing the social, environmental, and economic challenges facing society today to ensure a brighter tomorrow for future generations.

Further to encouraging and supporting its clients to be agents for social and environmental change through the certification process, Ecocert Canada lives its values, which is why its priorities align. For instance, 100 percent of the organization’s carbon emissions are offset annually, and its headquarters are in an energy-positive building.

As Jouve explains, this makes for an easy onboarding process. “Usually, the people that contact us are in the same state of mind; we already align on our values. They want the good for themselves, for their employees, for their customers, so it’s often very easy because we share our values with the partners that we have.”

Collaboration for good
Through its work, Ecocert addresses 14 out of 17 of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and this would not be possible without the many partners and stakeholders working together to be the change. Just as sustainability is collective in its very nature, so too is Ecocert Canada. The organization works in partnership with different Ecocert branches around the world: organizations like the Canada Organic Trade Association (COTA), provincial organic organizations, the government, and other similarly focused stakeholders who are dedicated to advancing a sustainable lifestyle and future.

Jouve explains how thinking globally but acting locally serves Ecocert’s mission: “It’s very important to be local but it’s a strength that we’re part of an international web so we can deliver state-of-the-art service to every client in Canada and help Canadian companies to export and make their values shine well beyond Canada.”

Working with farmers
Together with its partners, Ecocert not only supports clients with information and expertise but also serves as a bridge to funding opportunities. The On-Farm Climate Action Fund (OFCAF) is a collaborative effort with COTA to combat climate change by providing organic farmers with technical and financial support to implement beneficial management practices (BMPs) for nitrogen management and cover crops.

The funding, which is available through Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Agriculture Climate Solutions program, encourages farmers to adopt BMPs such as utilizing cover crops and increasing legume production in crop rotations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Through this fund, Jouve notes, “We are able to redistribute money to organic farmers across Canada with the condition that they have made new actions to tackle climate change. For example, they have put in place different cultures, rotations; they have put in place seeded legumes for example, [elements] that help to tackle climate change, so we are partners to those farmers.”

While there are many organizations like Ecocert working together to promote sustainable production and consumption systems, at the heart of these efforts are the farmers, the operators, and the processors who are making the changes necessary to be a part of the collective effort to leave the planet better than they found it. As this mindset continues to grow in the minds of producers and consumers, these changes are reflected in the greater market, and while there has been growth in the organics sector, it still represents only a small fraction of overall sales, which means there is still greater opportunity and potential.

“If you look at the overall share of the Canadian food market, [organic is] such a tiny share. It’s less than five percent of the Canadian food basket,” says Jouve. “There’s still so much that needs to be done.”

Whether that means continuing to advance organic production, the protection of biodiversity, fair trade, food safety and quality, or one of the other certification areas Ecocert specializes in, there is still a long road ahead, and there are still countless ways companies and individuals in Canada, with the support of Ecocert, can improve social and environmental outcomes for living ecosystems and their inhabitants.

The post Shared Convictions for a Brighter Tomorrow<p class="company">Ecocert Canada</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

Agriculture and agri-food are vital contributors to the country’s economy, employing an estimated 2.1 million people, and generating Can $134.9 billion, approximately 6.8 percent of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP).

To achieve this, many of the country’s 189,874 farms, whether small or large, use chemical fertilizers to enrich their soil, provide plant nutrition, and increase crop yields. Used for decades, some chemical fertilizers contain potassium, ammonium phosphate, and nitrogen, used in the formation of protein.

So the Government of Canada’s announcement that it was targeting a 30 percent reduction in nitrous oxide emissions from synthetic nitrogen fertilizer by 2030 to reduce greenhouse gases met a fiery reaction from farmers and associations like the Alberta Wheat Commission.

Calling for greater clarity, the Commission said the 2030 target “has fueled confusion and frustration due to a lack of clarity on what will be measured and how,” adding that farmers were not consulted over the proposed nitrogen reduction, which is aimed at “what seems to be an arbitrary and unachievable target.”

Some, like Joshua Day Chief, CEO at AdvancedAg, and son of the founder, Dr. Phyllis Day Chief, believe farmers suspected that limiting nitrogen in fertilizers was inevitable, but there was uncertainty over when it would happen.

“I felt a lot of farmers knew something like this was coming,” says Day Chief. “And whether or not they thought it was going to be federally mandated—even for their own farms—they knew what they were doing for years wasn’t sustainable. It just wasn’t.”

The future of farming
Described as “A family-owned Canadian business to the core,” AdvancedAg was created in 2016, yet the roots of the company go much deeper than that. Beginning long before the company—and its unique focus on using innovative, cutting-edge biology to improve soil and water health—even existed, founder Dr. Phyllis Day Chief worked at Alberta’s Lethbridge College as a technical writing instructor for almost 35 years.

Working with other entrepreneurs across North America, Phyllis saw a new technology being developed out of Cleveland, Ohio, for cleaning wastewater and ponds. Approaching the supplier, she asked if anyone in Canada was working with the product. The supplier replied by asking her why would anyone want to treat bodies of water that are frozen half the year.

Through her college connections, Phyllis met Cal Koskowich, Industrial Technology Advisor at National Research Council Canada, and formed a partnership with Lethbridge College’s Aquaculture Centre of Excellence.

“During the early stages of our business, we partnered with them, and the research we were doing turned out to be quite important,” says Day Chief. Now 36, Joshua remembers helping at AdvancedAg as a kid, moving boxes and getting a feel for the Indigenous-owned business and its research. Later, attending Lethbridge College and graduating from the Environmental Assessment and Restoration program, he briefly worked in the reclamation industry before entering the family’s business full-time in 2014.

“It was mom and I, and we were focused on water treatment at the time, setting up presentations to talk to municipalities,” he says. “Our bacteria are capable of so many things depending on how we grow them, but we decided we wanted to focus on water remediation—large lake and storm pond remediation for municipalities—rather than spread ourselves too thin,” says Day Chief.

Growth throughout Canada
Making annual trips to Cleveland to meet with their head scientist and suppliers, AdvancedAg was shown a biotechnology that was being used on high-value crops such as pineapples, avocados, aloe vera, and bananas, centred mainly in developing countries where crops were treated with backpack sprayers.

However, the company also knew that the research it was conducting, and the bacteria it was culturing for large-scale operations, were relevant to Canadian crops and conditions. So, the next year, AdvancedAg applied the technology to a farm and saw positive results right away.

Partnering with several third-party consulting agencies and research centres to get replicated trial work done on the crop side of things soon saw data come back. “It was incredible how the bacteria were responding in the soil, producing larger plants and roots and increasing overall biomass, which was leading to healthier crops,” says Day Chief.

“So that’s really where it all started. Being here in Canada, in such a small, tight-knit community of agriculture—I’d say not just in the prairies, but across Canada coast-to-coast—you’re probably only a couple of people away from knowing everyone in the agriculture industry.”

Word about the company and its results spread quickly, and Day Chief was approached by farmers who said they wanted to focus on their soil health and soil biology—that they had hit a wall. Already using too many expensive chemical fertilizers and synthetic products, they were compelled to use more and more to get better crops.

Soon, circumstances prompted them to begin envisaging AdvancedAg as a leader in improving soil and water through 100 percent natural, organic-certified products, supported by decades of research and innovation. “Since 2016, we now have about 50 locations brewing our bacteria across the country,” Day Chief says, “and we have a couple in the U.S. as well. It’s really taken off for us.”

In 2020, AdvancedAg won the Environmental Stewardship Award, as well as the Technology and Innovation Award in 2022 at the Lethbridge Chamber of Commerce Business of the Year Awards. The company is now being considered by the Alberta Chamber of Commerce for the Indigenous Business of Distinction Award.

Natural by nature
The team at AdvancedAg sees a day soon when its all-natural bacteria products are widely available—ideal for both small and large farming operations, parks and recreation, golf courses, water treatment, and home and garden. AdvancedAg has recently launched a retail division for customers outside of large-scale agriculture called A*LIVE Bio. The company is now in many SiteOne Landscape Supply locations, helping customers create more vibrant and healthier lawns, gardens and flowers.

“It’s not just farmers that need a better way to grow things,” says Day Chief. “Other people want that too, to put something on their lawn or garden that’s safe enough to have your kids or dogs run right through it after applying. With a lot of chemical fertilizers, they can’t do that. We’re seeing huge growth on the retail side as well.” (As an aside for home gardeners, Day Chief notes that the product also works well to repair dog urine burns on grass.)

At present, the company’s line of eco-friendly “A*LIVE” bioproducts are available at 15 SiteOne locations in Western Canada and should soon be in other stores across the country.

“A consortium of function-focused microbes”
The bacteria in AdvancedAg’s ACF-SR “perform key functions in the soil, including fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere, solubilizing essential nutrients, such as phosphorus and potassium, and producing phytohormones, which provide the full spectrum of plant growth promoting (PGP) functions in the soil,” according to the company.

“Yet it isn’t a fertilizer that you apply to your lawn and it’s lush in a day or two,” emphasizes Day Chief. “It can sometimes take a couple weeks. We’re fixing the soil for improved root development so plants can grow healthier for longer, using sustainable practices and technology.” He also says the company is moving away from the word “bacteria,” using “microbes” instead, since bacteria seem to have a negative connotation for some.

“What we’re using is a consortium of function-focused microbes,” says Day Chief. “Each species of microbes we use has one or many functions for plant growth. And when we use similar ones for water treatment, each one of those species has a function for nutrient cycling, like breaking down solids, or outcompeting algae for food,” he explains.

“It’s just incredible how we are able to train these bugs. We put them through a series of tests so we know what they’re going to do when we apply them, and that’s also something that separates us from many other biological products.”

Saving money and nurturing growth
Along with being better for the environment and free from chemicals, AdvancedAg’s products are considerably cheaper than fertilizer, resulting in cost-savings for farmers and other customers.

“Even if we are able to achieve the same yields as farmers had before, but they’re cutting back 20 percent of their fertilizer, that’s money in their pocket,” he says. “We also know the quality of the crops is much higher, and long-term, it’s also an investment in their soil, so their kids can take over the farm in a better spot than where their parents and grandparents left it.”

Through AdvancedAg’s products, farmers are saving money and nurturing future growth by building root development and increasing available nutrients in the soil, seeing better results year after year.

“The farmers who have used ACF for multiple years are seeing better results than the first year,” says Day Chief. “We’re really changing things in the soil, so it’s more of a regenerative approach, compared to historically, where farmers were putting down so many pounds of fertilizer and hoping for big yields that year.”

Along with improving overall soil conditions for farmers, AdvancedAg’s products are being used by municipalities to improve the condition of water in storm retention ponds, which are used to collect nutrients and waste. “You have green spaces, parks, baseball fields, people’s lawns. We know that only roughly 40 percent of all nitrogen applied to any type of crop is used by the plant; 60 percent of that runs off into our water, and about 50 percent of phosphorus is used by the plant, so these fertilizers aren’t very efficient,” Day Chief explains.

“We know that by using bacteria and utilizing what’s already in the soil and atmosphere—as opposed to putting something on—plants are going to use nutrients efficiently and we’re going to have zero harmful runoff at all,” he says.

AdvancedAg isn’t out to replace synthetic products such as fertilizer—which is extremely important, although it has had bad press in the mainstream media. The issue, says Day Chief, is that producers have become over-reliant on synthetic chemicals because there has been a lack of options to meet yield requirements.

“We are just hoping to create more of a balance, and we know we can cut back [on fertilizer] and put something else in place where we’re going to get a better long-term result,” he says. “It’s a balance. I think agriculture, and the way we’ve been fertilizing and using chemicals, has been way off balance over the last 50 years.”

The post Doers, Dreamers, and Visionaries<p class="company">AdvancedAg</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

Tapping into talent
Headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario—renowned for hundreds of tech businesses and world-class universities and colleges—privately held Prime Automation is home to some of Canada’s best and brightest. With two locations in Waterloo and a third in Clearwater, Florida, Prime serves customers in Canada, the United States, and abroad. For all customers, many advantages come from working with Prime.

“With offices in Canada and the United States, we are building teams that are able to service our customers as efficiently as possible from either side of the border,” says Director Mike Taub. “Combining our local support with our team’s ability to provide remote support, we can provide our customers with quality service in a shorter timeframe.”

Prime’s way is to tap into the Kitchener/Waterloo talent pool by working with co-op programs and building its team through internal development and opportunities. Over the years, the company has nurtured relationships with Conestoga College. One of Canada’s fastest-growing colleges and a leading polytechnic institution, Conestoga is a source of co-op students for the company.

Prime hired many recent talented graduates from Conestoga’s robotics program and has been previously named Employer of the Year (Cooperative Education). Often, team members introduce their friends and new grads to the company because of its dynamic and successful relationship with Conestoga College.

“Our focus is to build people up from junior, entry-level positions,” says Director Chad Harrison, “and help them develop into a role of seniority rather than hiring for those types of positions. This grows the opportunities for everyone when we promote from within. We are also focusing on team-building events and team bonding, and don’t want to have just a 9 to 5 place where you work with acquaintances.”

The company believes that being innovative and providing cutting-edge solutions in markets like food and beverage, pharmaceutical, and automotive plays a key role in its success. By building and maintaining a great work environment, Prime can keep its team enthusiastic.

Known for its positive and encouraging environment, Prime’s perks for its people include paid training, paid travel, competitive wages, benefit packages, and great opportunity for growth. “This includes flexibility, supporting the junior team with the senior team—always being there for them—and creating an environment of mentorship for new graduates,” says Director Paul Puttick.

Value for customers
Seeking to “shake up the automation industry, challenge convention, and make the impossible possible,” Prime remains focused on providing superior automation solutions and outstanding customer service.

From food and beverage to packaging and palletizing, water treatment, life sciences, consumer goods, metal forming, and transportation, Prime’s strength is creating fresh and innovative ways to deliver real performance, peak efficiency, and cost-effectiveness.

Handling design, installation, industrial programming (including programmable logic control [PLC], human machine interface [HMI], and supervisory control and data acquisition [SCADA]), Prime provides everything needed to get automation systems up and running.

The company is skilled at picking up the ball at different stages, coming on board at the design stage of a new facility; when it’s already under construction; or even when completed. “We have opportunities where we’re working with customers at a greenfield level on a new plant and discussing automation at that stage, or on a retrofit plant that’s been operating for the last 50 years,” says Director of Automation Ryan Bauml.

Prime is also adept at performing decommissioning and modernization—when a system is old or no longer meets safety requirements—and offers remote support based on customer needs. “We are actively creating remote support systems,” adds Bauml.

Although Prime doesn’t advertise itself as a 24/7 breakdown business, it has programmers and electricians on staff who can get to customer sites at short notice. “If we get the call and we can do it, we’ll support it.”

Future-focused
Guided by a vision and values that include providing optimal designs, exceptional value, and support for the Canadian economy, Prime Automation is also deeply committed to making new team members feel welcome and creating an open, teaching-oriented workplace.

Believing in getting the next generation of potential employees interested in automation, the company has established several initiatives. These include a facility tour promoting the trades to new and low-income Canadians with the Waterloo Region business and educational partnership, and the Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program (OYAP), a school-to-work transition program. Prime is also supporting local outdoor recreation programs, and sponsoring the 35 km long Hydrocut trail system, one of Ontario’s premier mountain bike riding destinations.

Prime is also active with the PAC Program out of Conestoga College’s Program Advisory Committee, an educational and industry collaborative initiative to develop better-trained and qualified skilled workers for the future.

Industry-wide, Prime Automation’s stellar reputation keeps growing. This includes being featured in the Waterloo EDC Automation ecosystem. In 2021, on the back of a 296 percent three-year growth in revenue, Prime made the Globe & Mail’s Report on Business list of Canada’s Top Growing Companies, ranking 149 out of 448.

Says Harrison: “We want to be as big as possible without sacrificing what we’ve got: a good work environment, a strong team, and quality work.”

The post Cutting-Edge Solutions<p class="company">Prime Automation Inc.</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

Founded in 1926 in Munich, Germany by Ernst Grob (whose family still controls the firm), the company is headquartered in Mindelheim, Germany with a North American branch in Bluffton, Ohio and branches in Brazil, China, and Italy. It has earned an enviable reputation for its high-end machining centers, automated pallet systems, and industrial software. Alongside these products, the company recently introduced a revolutionary, liquid metal printer and a pallet storage tower.

While the company still serves the medical, die and mold, aerospace, energy, and military sectors, it has massively grown its presence in the electromobility market, exemplified by electric vehicles (EVs).

“GROB was primarily a machine tool builder throughout our almost 100-year history. That’s what we were known for [plus] some assembly work but, a few years ago, our leadership had enough vision to recognize there was an industry shift from combustion engines,” states Glenn Oshel, Director of Key Accounts for E-mobility at GROB Systems Inc., the firm’s North American operation.

The company “has made a tremendous investment in e-mobility research. We took engineers who only worked on machine tools their whole life and told them, ‘Hey, you’re going to work on a [battery] cell manufacturing system.’ It was a big culture shock for a lot of engineers but, in the end, we made that transition, and over the past four or five years, we’ve gone from basically zero percent e-mobility to fifty percent of our business being e-mobility now,” he continues.

This transition has also entailed a massive rethink of the services and solutions required by automotive manufacturers. “Everybody is worried about the displacement of machining centers for cylinder heads or engine blocks or transmission cases. We’re seeing a lot of that get replaced now with machining for battery trays. The message I want to share: ‘Don’t think that because there’s not a [gas] engine, all the machining opportunities are gone. They’re not. They’re just machining different things now. They’re [machining] much more structural, larger components,’” says Oshel.

Going forward, GROB is looking to offer “larger machines for frames. As e-mobility continues to expand, the types of vehicle frames are changing from primarily stamped types of material to giga-casting and mega-casting; the parts are getting huge. For example, look at a pickup truck. From wheel to wheel, you have a battery tray,” says Derek Schroeder, Universal Machine Sales Manager for GROB Systems Inc. Popularized by EV maker Tesla, giga-casting and mega-casting are methods of making vehicles with a small number of large-size parts using mammoth casting machines.

Given the rate at which it is adding personnel, GROB’s transition to e-mobility solutions has clearly been a success: since Manufacturing in Focus profiled the company in May 2021, it has hired 360 employees at its North American division. Total employment in Bluffton now stands at 850 people. The parent firm also recently hired hundreds of new staff members in Germany.

Among other tasks, the company designs and builds equipment and systems for making stators and rotors, as well as battery cells and modules and packs for the e-mobility market. GROB is investigating e-mobility opportunities in aerospace and keeping an eye on future technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells.

Last September, the company announced a partnership with German firms Manz, which specializes in high-tech mechanical engineering, and Durr, which specializes in plant and mechanical engineering. Working together, these three companies want to supply facilities to produce lithium-ion batteries for EVs.

The goal is to “be able to supply a complete turnkey solution from raw material to finished cell system. I think we’re the only one-stop shop for cell manufacturing,” says Oshel.

GROB has also positioned itself at the forefront of another burgeoning trend with the introduction of the GMP300 liquid metal printer. While additive manufacturing is not a new technology, plastics are the most common material used in the additive sector. GROB GMP300 uses a new technology to print aluminum components without the use of powder and without a laser. “Liquid metal printing represents a completely new technology with fast build rates, no health hazards, and a lean overall process. The parts can be removed and used directly after printing; no mechanical separation or heat treatment is necessary,” notes Stephan Kowalski, who works at the Center of Excellence Medical for GROB in Europe.

Unlike other additive manufacturing systems, the GMP300 is not only designed for one-off production, but can also produce small batches economically. Oshel suggests that the printer can be used to produce replacement parts, jigs and fixtures, and prototypes. Lightweight structures can even be realized in completely enclosed shapes with this powder-free printing process that produces the components without excess raw material.

For all this innovation, GROB still excels at making traditional equipment for manufacturing. The company’s G150 and G350 universal, five-axis machining centers, for example, are well-suited for machining medical parts. The compact G150 has working travels of 450, 670, and 665 mm in its X, Y, and Z axis, while the larger G350 has working travels of 600, 855, and 750 mm in its X, Y, and Z axis. It also offers four-axis universal machining centers such as the G440, G640, and G840.

Earlier this year, the G150 came in first place in a review of milling machines conducted by Produktion, a European trade publication. Produktion judged nearly sixty milling machines from various companies on criteria such as automation, maintenance, control system, and total cost of ownership.

GROB continues to design and build automated pallet storage and changing systems as well. The firm recently introduced the customizable PSS-T300 tower pallet storage system, which boosts part production throughput and can store 38 square pallets or 81 round pallets. When connected to a GROB G150, G350 or G350a machining center, the PSS-T300 can operate continuously without human assistance.

Manufacturing clients looking to enhance productivity and efficiency might want to check out the company’s suite of GROB-NET⁴Industry applications. These include GROB⁴Line, which allows machines to be controlled and monitored via smartphone, and GROB⁴Analyze, which identifies unproductive phases so that the causes of weaknesses can be quickly identified and corrected. GROB⁴Interface, which allows the transfer of machine data to other systems, regardless of the manufacturer, and GROB⁴TDX, which allows the automatic transfer of tool data to a machine, are two other important applications.

GROB’s cutting-edge machines and technology are complemented by an emphasis on quality and customer support. It has maintained its ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 14001:2015 certification and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) registration. ITAR registration gives the company entry to American military-related aerospace projects.

Staff from the Bluffton division offer training to clients who purchase GROB solutions in North America. Training can be conducted at the Bluffton facility or the client’s worksite, an example of the customer-friendly approach that has been key to the company’s enduring success.

Hosting open house events is another way GROB demonstrates its client-centered ethos. In late March of this year, staff in Germany showcased new technologies and equipment and had industry experts on hand for a four-day in-house exhibition. The 3,500 visitors who attended had the opportunity to view more than thirty machines.

“You could spend a whole day and find on every corner a new technology and the solution to your problem,” says Kowalski of the German exhibition.

The Bluffton facility, meanwhile, recently held an open house of its own. “Every once in a while, we like to have the general public come in, tour the facility, and see what we do. The employees can bring in people they know and the public can see us. In Northwest Ohio, everyone thinks GROB is a factory; they don’t understand. It’s high technology. It’s not line work. Everybody has a complicated job to do,” says Schroeder.

The open house was a big hit, with more than 3,000 visitors on a Saturday. As a follow-up, the Bluffton facility will host a customer event in August, to “show processes from different industries.”

Like all industries across North America, GROB faces the challenge of attracting new skilled workers. The company has met this challenge in large part through its comprehensive, four-year apprenticeship program. Established over three decades ago, the program consists of a mix of on-the-job training and classroom education.

“We pay for their school, their wages, their instructors. It’s a huge investment for us,” Schroeder states, adding that the expense is worth it in terms of preparing well-trained workers.

The company maintains an optimistic outlook, as evidenced by the fact it is adding another 100,000 square feet to the Bluffton facility, with construction scheduled to begin later this year. “If you look at an overhead view of the plant, it keeps getting longer and longer,” he says.

In the future, GROB aims to continue to balance its presence in traditional markets with new opportunities. “Strategically, we want to keep it 50/50, as best they can, between e-mobility and machining,” states Oshel.

This view is echoed by Schroeder who says, “I think, in the universal machines, we have to continue to gain market share—for example, by expanding in the medical sector. In the e-mobility space, the challenge in the next five years will be to maintain the market share that we have.”

The post Speeding Ahead in the E-Mobility Market<p class="company">GROB Systems</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

They worked hard burying telephone drops for major telecommunications players in the state of Texas, building a portfolio and a reputation for quality. As technology advanced, so too did Housley Communications, which expanded beyond telecommunications into gas, power, and wet utilities to become Housley Group.

Since then, projects have taken the company across Texas and further afield, a footprint that’s now supported by nine offices, including Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas. Housley has previously completed work internationally in Mexico and Africa.

Despite this growth and expansion, Housley Group is still a family business that maintains the work ethic and the underlying virtues with which Mr. Housley founded the company, but has greatly diversified the services it offers, the equipment used, and the skills and expertise within its growing ranks.

This has been possible because of the relationships and deeply rooted culture that originated with Mr. Housley and continued to be replicated by his late son, Robert Kevin Housley, his grandson Chris Housley, who recently assumed the role of Executive Vice President, his wife Mona, who serves as Chairperson for the Housley Board, and current President/CEO Dave Meek who has been instrumental in maintaining excellence for the 37 years he has worked at Housley.

The company culture was founded on four basic principles: honesty, integrity, quality, and professionalism, virtues that still guide the growing company and are maintained by long-tenured employees like Vice President of Risk Management Stacy Elms, who has been there for thirty years.

Discussing the legacy left by Mr. Housley, Elms says, “Mr. Housley always wanted us to do the right thing… He always wanted us to keep that in mind and that’s been the secret of our success: quality work done in a timely manner, and having the moral compass to do things right every time.”

When a company grows, change is inevitable, but in 43 years at the Housley Group one thing has remained unchanged: the proud Housley name and what it stands for. Now, with $50 million worth of equipment, 250 employees, and a strong subcontractor base upwards of 900 people, Housley Group is massively in demand.

Last year, during a telecommunications peak, the company was busy indeed, seeing revenue in excess of $110 million. The team buried more than a million linear feet of fiber per month for a single customer on a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) project, and completed 94,000 different orders across three different telecommunications players on the buried-service-wire side.

“Telecom is our bread and butter, but if it goes underground and it’s a linear trench or directional bore—it doesn’t matter if it’s gas, power, or water, it doesn’t matter what conduit or pipe you put into the ground—we can do that,” says Chris Housley.

Part of the reason Housley Group can offer this guarantee of quality is the skill and experience its long-tenured employees bring to the table, and the leadership style that has been instilled in those employees over the past several decades.

It’s unusual in the construction world to find companies with employees who have been with them for twenty to thirty years, but retention is an advantage that Housley Group enjoys, particularly amongst its crew leaders and management. These employees exemplify quality, safety, service, and professionalism, and share their skills and experience with new team members.

According to Elms, “The new people that we hire, that we bring in to stand on the business end of the shovel, they learn from those long-term crew leaders, employees, and managers the standards that we want them to adhere to. So when you start day one, you go through safety initiation, certainly—but really, that’s not the secret.”

He continues, “Anybody can go through safety orientation; it’s when you arrive on a worksite from day one and you see that your fellow employees are working safely and efficiently and that they’re teaching you the right and safe way to do things, that reinforces the safety briefing that you got. On-the-job training from those crew leaders, supervisors, and managers reinforces that story from day one.”

Acknowledging that to err is only human, Housley says that safety truly is top-down at Housley Group. When incidents occur, they’re well-documented and communicated across the entire company to ensure that there’s accountability at every level to create a teaching moment and mitigate risks in the future. “We hear that accountability from the guy who’s working the shovel all the way up to Stacy’s and my position,” he says.

For Chris Housley, there is a lot more on the line than just the success of the family business; it’s a family legacy that he intends to preserve while also modernizing to remain competitive long into the future. “There’s a legacy here that I get to step into and I’m looking forward to the future of the company,” he says.

To ensure that Housley Group thrives for generations to come, the plan is to continue to offer quality work delivered on time with the foremost commitment to safety. The company is also streamlining its operations, identifying efficiencies that can support further diversification of the business.

Housley notes that, “We’re going to continue to succeed in telecom; we’ve done that for forty years and we’re poised to do business as usual, which means anything from repairs to installation of brand-new utilities.” But growth is also anticipated in the gas, power, and wet utilities sectors, which will require further investment in the company’s capacities.

Elms goes into detail: “Doing work in the regulated space, in the case of gas-related work, investing in our employees for the type of training that they need, keeping that training up to date, making sure that they’re trained not only for the work to be done but doing it safely so that those customers like gas companies trust us to do that kind of work. As we move into more of the power industry, we aren’t currently completing energized work, but because of the quality of work that we’ve done for those power customers before, they’re looking to us to expand.”

Concerning market diversification, Housley Group is focused on further diversifying the tools and equipment at its disposal, as well as adopting automation and new technology to streamline its operations for greater efficiency as it grows. As Housley says, “We’re a forty-year-old company, but still, why are we doing it that way? We’ve done things well, but let’s do them better by streamlining processes and challenging ourselves to be more efficient with what we have.”

It bodes well for Housley Group that the Texas market is ripe for growth. As the population grows, not only is there a greater labor pool from which to draw, but the growth also increases demand for infrastructure and thus for the services Housley Group offers.

“We’re in the right place at the right time and I don’t see anything but growth coming,” says Elms. The company is well-poised to capitalize on that opportunity, all the while remaining true to its core values, building steadfast relationships through exceptional project delivery, and evolving to stay diversified and competitive for the long term.

The post A Legacy in Action<p class="company">Housley Group</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

Serving Pennsylvania, Delaware, Northern Maryland, and Northern New York, Keystone Custom Decks works closely with each of its clients, completing a 3D rendering of their proposed project to ensure total satisfaction. Founded in 1983 by Amos Esh, this family-owned and operated company features bespoke design for customized outdoor living spaces that meet the needs of each customer.

Now run by sons Michael, Marv, and Tim, Keystone continues to work with talented and experienced craftsmen to ensure the same quality service and exceptional product that has led to an impressive 40 years in business.

“When my father started this business, he built it on the premise of making sure his customers were taken care of,” says Partner Michael Esh. “When we were growing up, even if at times my father would have to take a loss on a job to make sure the customers were happy, he would do that. He was very concerned and very intent on making sure customers were taken care of, and that’s been the backbone of our company for 40 years now—making sure our clients are satisfied and happy with the work done.”

Keystone stands behind its work, providing a lifetime warranty on workmanship. The consistent dedication to ensuring customer satisfaction is also one of the main reasons for its ongoing success, Esh adds.

“Besides that, we’ve always stayed on the cutting edge of the industry, and we’ve always been proactive about recognizing and being ahead of new trends,” he says. Indeed, Keystone is known in the industry, particularly regionally, to be a forward-thinking company that not only recognizes industry advances but introduces new products and styles to the market.

“The third part of our success is our team, which is phenomenal,” says Esh. “They have been a huge part of everything.”

Keystone is also a full-service company, able to handle all aspects of every project it undertakes, from start to finish, in-house. When a client contacts them, Keystone first ensures the project is a good fit for what the company does. From there a salesperson goes to the home for an initial meeting to talk about design, make suggestions, and even help clients who have no idea what they want. The salesperson brings all the information back to the team of in-house designers, who create a 3D rendering with a video walkthrough of the entire project, all of which is done before the customer ever signs a contract.

“The second step is coming into our facility to our showroom where we present them with the 3D design, which is the first time they’re actually seeing the design,” Esh explains. “This gives them a very good visual of what their project will look like, and because their house is put into the rendering as well, they can see in good detail exactly what this project would look like on their house.”

From there, when the client is ready to go ahead, the project moves onto the production site where a team takes care of all permits. There is also a team purchasing necessary products, and when it’s time to start, clients are assigned a project manager.

“Then our crews go out and build the project,” says Esh. “We have our own mason crews, our own excavating crews, and our own pool crew if the project involves a pool. Someone can come to us and say, ‘we want a deck with a covered portion,’ or ‘we want a patio, swimming pool, or outdoor kitchen with electrical and plumbing work’—we handle all of that so they don’t have to work with external contractors or hire their own electrician and plumber to make it happen. We handle the entire project.”

This exceptional level of service is unusual in the industry, he adds, and has led to a lot of positive feedback from customers over the years. “To find a company that does everything for the backyard all under one umbrella is pretty unique.”

Being able to streamline a potentially timely and challenging project is clearly attractive to clients who aren’t interested in being their own general contractor; they just want the project done, and they want someone to handle it all, including coordinating all the scheduling.

This commitment to customer service has also led to impressive growth over the past few years, particularly at the height of COVID lockdowns when so many homeowners and families were forced to not only work from home but live, play, and also make the best of their backyards. Although shutdowns negatively affected many industries, others were able to thrive.

“Anybody who was doing anything with home improvement just had stellar years in 2020, 2021, and into 2022,” says Esh. “People figured out they were going to be home for a while, and they decided to spend money improving their homes. They also figured they probably wouldn’t be doing much traveling and vacations for a couple of years, so people used a good bit of the money typically spent on that to improve their homes.”

Homeowners investing in their living spaces—both indoors and out—created phenomenal growth for Keystone during those couple of years, with demand that was unlike anything the company had seen previously, Esh adds. Fortunately, Keystone was well-positioned to handle it, having moved into a brand-new facility several years prior.

“We had room to expand, we had our showroom set up and built, and we were positioned very well to respond to that increased demand,” Esh shares.

COVID, of course, did impact the supply chain globally, leading to issues obtaining certain materials, colors, and appliances, but Keystone managed to weather the storm.

“It’s leveled out a lot. It’s a lot better than it was,” Esh says. “Suppliers were trying to figure it out, and pricing was all over the map, so there were challenges to work through for a couple of years.”

COVID also changed the employment landscape—perhaps permanently—with more people working both hybrid and completely off-site, so while the demand for home improvement isn’t quite as high these days, it’s still impressive, he adds. And it’s a demand that Keystone will continue to embrace in the upcoming years. As a well-established company with 40 years of experience and a phenomenal team of people, Keystone is able to provide an entire dedicated team on every project from beginning to end.

“It’s not just one guy out of the back of his truck that you might not be able to get hold of,” Esh says. “When you call into our office during business hours, you’ll get an answer from a live person, which is rare. With Keystone, you’re well taken care of.”

This includes a team that works solely on building permits, he emphasizes, something many contractors can’t readily provide as they’re either working on the side, or they’re letting the homeowner take responsibility for it—a stress that isn’t needed. “We have that infrastructure built to take care of our clients from start to finish throughout the process, and I think that’s one of the things that really sets us apart.”

While economic conditions are always a challenge and can certainly affect consumer confidence, Keystone is always looking ahead and staying aware to keep producing its best work no matter the economic climate.

“We’re not trying to sell clients something they can’t afford or that isn’t the right fit for them at the time,” says Esh. “Part of our process is finding the best type of project for them. Is a bigger project or smaller project going to serve their needs better? Those are some of the challenges we address, especially with the uncertain markets right now, where nobody knows what’s going to happen.”

Along with the accomplishment of getting to 40 years in a notoriously challenging industry and growing a knowledgeable and reliable team into the formidable operation it is now, Keystone also has its eyes on some key milestones.

“Doing what we do with excellence has always been our objective, and sometimes that opens up opportunities that we can take advantage of and integrate into our company as far as expansion goes,” says Esh. “So, moving forward, we’ll just keep doing what we do and doing it well. That’s what our goal is.”

The post Backyard Bliss – Building Beauty Close to Home<p class="company">Keystone Custom Decks</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

Founded in 1946 by Frank Brink, Brink Constructors’ supportive company culture has remained strong throughout the decades. “I would say that the thing that sets us apart from everybody else is our family atmosphere here,” says President John Keeler. “We operate as a family.”

Despite Brink Constructors Inc. becoming a subsidiary of Quanta Services in 2015, the company’s foundational culture persists. “There’s actually been Brink family [working for the company] all 76 years that the company has existed,” Keeler says. “Even today, after being bought out and owned by Quanta, there’s still Brink family here. We actually have fourth-generation Brinks in the organization today.”

This supportive, family atmosphere is also evident in the way that the company does business every day. “We never leave a job without knowing that we’re going to be invited back,” says Keeler. “We take that to heart, actually. That’s a pride thing; making sure that you do not only quality work, but that you take care of the customer. You do the job that you were hired to do.”

This attitude extends beyond the customers to the landowners and stakeholders who are affected by the company’s work. The team makes it a point to leave the land as close to how they found it as possible. It all goes back to that “pride piece of it, the family piece of it,” Keeler explains. “That’s the point of difference for us.”

Partnering for success
Parent company Quanta Services performs specialty contracting for the pipeline, industrial, communication, and electric power industries. The holding company approached the Brink family with a mutually beneficial offer that led to the 2015 acquisition.

“They buy companies that just need a little boost to take them to the next level,” Keeler explains.

Quanta’s company culture has proven a natural fit for Brink Constructors. “Quanta is a family too,” he says. And, as one big, extended family, Quanta’s resources are freely shared. “For anything that comes up that we have questions on, we have a one-way link right back to Quanta. If we need resources, we’re all family. You pick up the phone and they guide and help you through whatever you may have on your plate in front of you,” he shares.

“They support us in operations; they support us in safety; they support us on the financial side [and with their] fleet. We all have the same common goal.”

All eyes on safety
It should come as no surprise that, as a family-oriented company, a big part of this goal is prioritizing the safety and well-being of employees. “All our employees are family,” says Director of Safety Jon Gunderman, “and our number one concern is for folks to go home at the end of the day.”

This mindset is deeply entrenched throughout the entire company. “Safety isn’t just something that happens at work,” he explains. “It’s a culture for us.”

Since joining the company a little over two years ago, Gunderman has ramped up the focus on safety even further. These efforts have included an increase in training opportunities and the creation of specific safety positions such as a dedicated safety training manager and a dedicated department of transportation compliance manager, increasing the safety department staff to a total of fourteen people.

Gunderman is a huge proponent of communication and encourages “open conversations” with employees regarding the importance of safety and how best to achieve safe outcomes. He says that addressing safety from the perspective of how it benefits the employee personally—rather than just as a box to check for liability purposes—is key.

Building community
After doing business in South Dakota for three-quarters of a century, Brink Constructors has become an integral part of the community. In 2021, in celebration of the company’s 75^th anniversary, the team launched the Frank Brink Memorial Scholarship to provide opportunities for local students.

Two graduating seniors from any West River high school are selected each year to receive scholarships to attend Northwest Lineman College’s electrical line worker program. The scholarship covers the full tuition as well as any application fees, laboratory fees, commercial driver’s license costs, National Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators (NCCCO) crane certification, and all required tools. The goal is to foster the next generation of professional line workers and to give back to the community while simultaneously honoring Brink Constructors’ legacy.

In another effort to support education within the industry, the company works closely with the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. “We volunteer time, equipment, and money and manpower to help them out,” says Keeler. Several of the company’s employees sit on various boards affiliated with the school, offering their insight and expertise in areas ranging from civil engineering to industrial and mechanical skills.

The company is also actively involved with diverse local community projects and events. This includes spearheading local lighting projects, volunteering at the local youth fair, sponsoring local high school rodeos as well as Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) rodeos, sponsoring a local softball team, volunteering at the Rapid City Summer Nights concerts, donating to the upkeep of local veterans memorials, and participating in local parades.

“We’re always looking for ways to get involved in the community, no matter what it is,” Keeler shares.

Adding to the family
Today, the team is looking ahead to the future, starting with making sure that future leaders are lined up to continue the company’s success. “We’re big on our development of leadership,” Keeler says. After experiencing rapid organic growth in recent years, these leaders will help guide the company through its ongoing expansion.

In addition to the Frank Brink Memorial Scholarship, the company is actively recruiting employees to support its growth and puts a concerted effort into visiting various colleges, including the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. Brink Constructors developed its first internship program with the school this year to support and develop professional talent, focusing on skills such as estimating, project management, safety, and quality control.

“We started that in 2023 to hopefully bring some of those engineering graduates that aren’t sure that they want to sit at the desk and design things all day long, but still have that construction mindset and mechanical abilities,” Keeler explains. “Those are our future leaders.”

Another recruitment focus is on linemen graduating from colleges all around the country, from Idaho and Texas to Florida, as well as locally in South Dakota. “With each graduating class, we go attend their career day the last week of their schooling, introduce them to Brink and who we are and where we’re working and what we’re doing and how we’re doing it,” Keeler says. “So that’s been a great way to pick up young linemen. But the seasoned and veteran linemen that are out there, a lot of [recruiting them] happens just by word of mouth. Employees recommend people to the company; we just do it old school.”

With an industry giant backing the company, in addition to a strong company culture and recruitment efforts to ensure a staff of highly skilled employees and future leaders, Brink Constructors is well-placed for ongoing success.

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