19 minute read
EOBJ takes you on a ride around the region
Ford plans massive car parts hub in Casselman
Ford Canada will be the anchor tenant in a new 1.1-million-square-foot industrial hub in Casselman.A pair of Quebecbased firms, Rosefellow and Bertone Development, are partnering on the multiphased development. The project is slated to eventually include three buildings, with work already under way on a $95-million, 531,000-square-foot auto parts distribution centre for Ford that’s expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2023.
Casselman is about 55 kilometres southeast of Ottawa. Rosefellow cofounder Mike Jager said the automaker was attracted to the site because of its close proximity to major population centres in eastern Ontario and Quebec, its amenities such as restaurants and hotels and its “work, live, play” lifestyle.
“You have all that in Casselman,” he said.
The Ford distribution centre is located on a 1.5-million-square-foot parcel of land just off Hwy. 417. Jager said the builders are finalizing a deal to buy an additional 1.5 million square feet of nearby property that’s eventually expected to be home to two more buildings of 130,000 and 400,000 square feet.
The proposed facilities don’t have tenants yet, but Jager said he’s not worried given eastern Ontario’s growing prominence as an e-commerce distribution hotbed.
“We’re firm believers in spec builds,” said. “If you build it, they will come. We believe that the market will be able to absorb (the space) quickly.”
Mero Technologies’ pandemic play
KINGSTON — With vaccine uptake allowing more and more businesses to think seriously about reopening their offices, cleanliness is increasingly top-ofmind for employers and employees alike. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Kingston tech company Mero Technologies turned itself into a “full cleanliness platform.” Operating in commercial buildings, hospitals, airports and other facilities, Mero provides peel-and-stick sensors that collect data for commercial cleaners, showing how much stock is left for essential items such as paper towels, toilet paper and soap — reducing the need for workers to physically check the areas. Mero was officially launched in 2019 by Nathan Mah and Cole MacDonald, who joined forces to automate the data-collection process, building a proof of concept with support from Queen’s University.
Campground with a beer garden
HAMMOND — Brad Cartier and his business partner, Aaron Markel, have opened Hammond Hill campground, a welcome addition to camping options in eastern Ontario. Their 62-acre property, about 20 minutes from Orleans, opened in August. As much as possible, the partners used materials from the site for construction. They bought a small sawmill to transform the limited number of trees they cut down into fence rails, yurt foundations (the campground has a few rentable yurts) and wood chips for trails.
Maria Rasouli says many Ottawans have an outdated notion of Cornwall, saying its perfect for cycling because it’s “flat, safe and scenic.” PHOTO BY LISA PAQUET
Entrepreneurs are looking beyond Ontario’s traditional tourism hotspots
BY LAURA BYRNE PAQUET
news@obj.ca
Shazad Ahmad didn’t plan to open a location of his kayak-rental business in Cornwall. After setting up his first spot in Wiarton, Ontario, he planned to establish his second location somewhere in the Greater Toronto Area, near his Mississauga home.
Red tape and a lack of support from large municipalities discouraged him. His experience in Wiarton had shown him that small places also offered lower operating costs, less competition, and more support from tourism organizations and fellow entrepreneurs.
“If you’re going to start a small business, always start it in a smaller town,” he says. “You have much more opportunities.”
He started searching further afield and discovered Cornwall, where Cornwall Tourism helped him find a suitable location on Lake St. Lawrence—a quiet stretch of the St. Lawrence Seaway—and promoted the operation he runs with business partner Imran Haider.
Their company, Boatingery Adventure Trends, has 16 transparent kayaks for rent. They recently added fat bikes to the mix to make the business a year-round operation, says Ahmad, who now lives in Cornwall.
Another entrepreneur who spotted tourism potential in Cornwall was Robert Prowse. A decade ago, the Toronto television producer wanted to buy a historic home to convert to a bed and breakfast. He knew southwestern Ontario well, but found prices there prohibitive. “The problem is the economic shadow of Toronto is so long that you really have to go all the way to Lake Huron to get out of it.”
Then, by chance, he discovered a derelict 1814 former inn in Cornwall, being sold via bank foreclosure. He knew little about the city, he says, but he was intrigued by a growing restaurant scene and the scenic waterfront. “I was very impressed. Cornwall is a post-industrial Ontario city that’s done a very good job of reinventing itself.”
Prowse paid $195,000 for the 6,400-square-foot building in 2013, then spent a year on extensive renovations before opening Chesley’s Inn. The work included replacing burst pipes and installing a new natural gas heating system and 31 vintage radiators.
To his surprise, about 70 percent of his clientele comes from the GTA and Southern Ontario, while many of the rest are from Montreal, British Columbia and Europe. “Cornwall is still a harder sell in Ottawa,” he concedes, noting that many Ottawans remember its “stinky” industrial past.
Maria Rasouli says many Ottawans have an outdated perception of the city of about 47,000 people. In 2021, the owner of Ottawa’s Escape Tours and Rentals chose Cornwall as the place to launch her first cycling tours beyond the National Capital Region.
“I think it has the perfect recipe for what people looking for bike tours and outdoor activities like to see…it’s flat and it’s safe and it’s scenic,” she says.
Cornwall Tourism has made cycling a key part of its promotional efforts. Given the pandemic-era interest in outdoor activities, the city’s 75-kilometre network of bike trails and lanes, and its position on the province-wide Great Lakes Waterfront Trail, “It was natural that cycling rose to the top,” says Kevin Lajoie, tourism officer with the City of Cornwall.
Cornwall Tourism has been using its share of the municipal accommodation tax, a 4-percent levy on short-term stays, to fund everything from advertising and festivals. In addition, it is one of several partners in the Spark program, a Dragon’s Den-style competition where would-be tourism entrepreneurs pitch their ideas in the hopes of landing $3,000 in start-up funding. Winners so far have included a food tour company, an event space and a sunflower farm.
Even in the pandemic, entrepreneurs continue to open tourism businesses— even if they didn’t initially have entrepreneurship on their minds. For instance, Ashley Willis moved from Toronto to Cornwall in 2018 to work in a bank and “to provide a better life for my daughter…in a smaller city.”
In September 2020, she launched AshNa Airbnb Property Management, managing four vacation rental units for private owners. A big fan of Cornwall’s community spirit, she’s building an informal network of local restaurants and shops so that she can create packages and arrange discounts for visitors.
While all of these entrepreneurs readily concede that the last two years have been far from easy in the tourism industry, they seem bullish on Cornwall’s prospects for riding out the wave.
Innkeeper Prowse says friends were surprised years ago when he didn’t buy a place in Kingston or another wellestablished tourism destination, but he preferred to get in on the ground floor of a good deal. “If you’re investing your life savings, you want to invest in a place on the way up.”
The Sawmill Redemption: Backyard loggers draw on history to reshape lumber industry
BY MARK VAN DUSEN
news@obj.ca
Wood cutting tools are essential in rural areas of Eastern Ontario and back in the day one such tool dominated the backroads landscape.
Now with fluctuating lumber prices and sometimes slow delivery, the backlot sawmill is making a big comeback.
Just ask woodlot owners in Renfrew County, where business is booming. OBJ spoke to sawmill owner Andrew Warren and Darrell Sennett of Darrell Sawmill’s Sales about an industry resurgence that can barely keep up with demand.
MARK VAN DUSEN: Let’s start with this - what’s a backyard sawmill?
ANDREW WARREN: We manufacture our own lumber from the mill and we sell it to the public or use it ourselves depending on the project.
How far back back in local history in Renfrew County does the tradition of the backyard sawmill go?
AW: That would be from whenever they started to build sawmills, 200 or 300 years ago. I think every farmer at one point had a sawmill. Then there were less of them, because they’re a lot of work. Then times came about that you could get lumber at a store.
So this goes back to the homestead days. Why did they mill their own lumber back then?
AW: Probably because to travel to a store to get the lumber was a pain and there were lots of trees on the property. So why not saw your own lumber right there?
What kind of wood products do you mill?
AW: We’re making cedar lumber, so we’re selling lumber for decks and fencing. Sometimes we get into a little bit of spruce lumber and pine lumber, but mostly it’s cedar lumber that’s our specialty and that’s what we tried to stick with.
Are we seeing a resurgence of the backyard sawmill in Renfrew County?
DARRELL SENNETT: Definitely. Lumber prices have gotten a lot of people back into the personal sawmill and they’re also sawing for other people as well. It’s the lumber prices, the lack of the lumber - all of that has really boosted my business.
How many sawmills would you sell in a normal year?
DS: Pre-Covid we probably sold about 50 or 60 and this year I will probably sell 140 mills - twice as many if the manufacturer was able to produce them. The manufacturer is having trouble getting material - even down to the workforce. They have a lot of skilled trades in the factory and they’re just not able to produce the normal numbers of sawmills. I think it was due to Covid, but I think now a lot of people are becoming more self-reliant. They’re buying local and it’s opened a lot of people’s eyes to what we have to do here to support our local industry.
How valuable is it to you to have a backyard sawmill?
AW: Very. I actually just bought my miil last year and thank goodness I did because if I would have waited until this year, I wouldn’t have got it. It’s about a year and a half wait now. The main reason why we bought it is we were depending on other people that saw our logs for us and I thought, well maybe we’ll get our own mill and it’ll speed up the process. We’ll have more lumber to sell in the long run.
How do you operate your business?
AW: I’m the only sawmill operator - I have two sons and I trained them to run it when I can’t be there. I take orders for lumber over the phone. I tell people right now the demand is so high, it’s four to five weeks waiting time before we can get caught up to that order.
How much do you produce?
AW: On a good day, by myself if everything is going just right I can produce around anywhere from a 1,000-board-feet to 1,500-board-feet depending on the size of my logs, the length of my logs. There are (large industrial) mills in Renfrew County that are putting out 200,000-board-feet in one shift.
Do you think this is a flash in the pan or or is this revival going to be around for a while?
DS: People are becoming more self-reliant. They don’t want to depend on the bigger businesses, the bigger companies. We’re always able to save a little bit of money here and there and the backyard producer can certainly operate a lot cheaper with smaller overhead compared to the big sawmills.
What do you see when you look at a fresh cut, milled piece of ash?
DS: I just like being able to go out there and make something out of nothing. You’re making something that’s usable. In the case of the ash it’s dead standing - you know if you don’t use it soon it’s gonna be basically no good for anything so. So if you can cut that down and make a piece of furniture at least you put that to good use.
Many shops are still closed worldwide. – Eric Bjergso, general manager, Canadian Co-operative Wool Growers
The price of wool has dropped almost 65 per cent from the highs of 2018 and now sits at the same level as a decade ago. PHOTO BY TOM VAN DUSEN Can ewe believe the price?
BY TOM VAN DUSEN
news@obj.ca
Turmoil.
That one word best describes the state of the international wool market and Canada’s position within it.
So says David Mastine, president of Canadian Co-operative Wool Growers, the central clearinghouse for collecting, grading and marketing of 1,360-tonnes of raw wool a year from across the country for domestic and foreign markets.
Attributable in part to COVID-19, the wool trade has been tough. Prices have dropped 65 per cent since 2018, with wool’s trading price on the benchmark Australian commodities index now sitting at the same level as a decade ago.
The co-op’s general manager Eric Bjergso calls it the deepest slump ever experienced in the industry. While demand for fine wool has increased, demand for broader wool has not. There’s a surplus of coarser types in every wool-producing country in the world.
“It seems that clothing demand in a global pandemic isn’t a high priority,” Bjergso observes. “Many shops are still closed worldwide.”
A visit with Bjergso reveals a warehouse with about 50 percent more stored, unsold wool than usual for this time of year. He says producers with adequate on-farm storage have been asked to hang on to their bundles until conditions improve.
However, wool is still being accepted and graded in Carleton Place.
Payments to producers are being processed. The co-op employs 50 staff, about half in Carleton Place, and no layoffs have been necessary during the downturn.
Under co-op guidelines, no matter the size of the submitted wool bundle, members are paid the same price for the same grade (fine, medium, coarse) rated according to fibre diameter and length, yield, colour, and presence of foreign matter, minus fees for operating the service.
The price to producers is adjusted quarterly to reflect global market conditions.
The pandemic hasn’t been the industry’s only challenge.
The market’s stagnation dates back to the China/U.S. trade dispute that’s run for almost a decade. That crisis forced the Canadian co-op to look at ways to diversify into new markets, with 90 per cent of its raw product exported to China, the U.S., India, Czech Republic, Egypt, Bulgaria and Uruguay.
The market is truly global, with Canada accounting for just a fraction of the almost 400-million tonnes of production each year.
As it waits for the industry to rebound, the co-op is pursuing research funding for developing new technologies which will permit scouring and processing raw wool in Canada. It’s also conducting a feasibility study on potential new products and markets.
Farmer-owned and established in 1918, the co-op occupies a large stone structure in Carleton Place, originally built as a Canadian Pacific Railway roundhouse and machine shops. The 103-year-old national network also operates several outlets for farm supplies and wool clothing.
Its Carleton Place headquarters contains the cozy, colourful Real Wool Shop and Livestock Supplies & Equestrian Centre, which contribute substantially to the CCWG bottom line, which, in good times, includes $12 million in sales.
Continued from page 49 Other eco-friendly initiatives include nokill bug spray and a chemical-free Japanese process for treating wood. Hammond Hill also has an unusual campground attraction — a beer garden serving beer from Markel’s Broken Stick Brewing Company, which is located at the nearby golf course. Because they’re all on the same property, the craft brewery’s licence extends to cover the campground. “As far as we can tell, I think [we’re] the first campsite [in Ontario] that is offering draft beer onsite,” Markel says.
New inventory management software
CHALK RIVER — CyberStockroom gives clients a visual approach to inventory management, allowing customers to create a virtual map of their business and populate it with their products. Creating a map-based approach to inventory management made sense to CyberStockroom president Emad Hanna, who said he has always been “a very visual learner” who liked to sketch things out when he was solving a problem. The flexibility of the software means the Renfrew County firm has a wide range of customers, including EMS, fire departments, police forces, warehouses, IT departments, labs and event production. It has even brought in big-name customers including Roche, Hasbro Gaming and Nordex.
Ross Video breaks ground on $15M expansion
DUNDAS — Just months after cracking the 1,000-employee mark, one of eastern Ontario’s leading manufacturers is breaking ground on a multimillion-dollar expansion of its largest plant. The expansion is expected to create dozens of additional jobs. Ross Video is spending $15 million on the project, which was launched Aug. 5 and will see the existing facility expanded by 55,000 square feet. The additional space will include two new production lines at the site in Iroquois, about 70 kilometres south of Ottawa on the St. Lawrence River. The Ontario government is contributing $3 million to the expanded plant, which is expected to create more than 40 new jobs.
Quebec-based CMP to open assembly plant in Cornwall
CORNWALL — Chateauguay-based CMP, a Quebec manufacturer, is setting up a 40,000-square-foot light assembly plant in Cornwall. The company has leased a building on Montreal Road in the eastern Ontario city and plans to hire up to 25 workers at its new facility. “As we grow our business, the need for additional capacity for light assembly work has emerged,” CMP talent acquisition and recruitment strategy adviser Alexandra Keenan told choosecornwall.ca. The company designs and manufactures products for customers in a range of industries, including the telecom, security and medical sectors. CMP says it will be hiring mechanical assemblers, drivers and quality inspectors as well as shipping and receiving clerks at the Cornwall plant. The new facility will add to CMP’s growing presence in Cornwall. Last year, the company opened a 90,000-squarefoot warehouse and logistics centre in the Cornwall Business Park.
$7-million distribution centre in Prescott
PRESCOTT — Milan-based Prysmian Group, a European manufacturing giant, is beefing up its presence in eastern Ontario with a multimillion-dollar expansion of its facility in Prescott. The company announced a $7-million plan to add a “world-class distribution centre” to its existing manufacturing plant in the town about 95 kilometres south of Ottawa on the St. Lawrence River. The company says the project will create about 15 new jobs in the region. As part of the investment, Prysmian plans to relocate its regional distribution centre from Brampton to Prescott. Construction will start this year, and the new facility is expected to be in operation by the third quarter of 2022.
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Kanata ‘bungalows in the sky’ create new lifestyle options for long-time homeowners
Amid Ottawa’s real estate market boom, two new premium apartment developments in Kanata are enticing homeowners to tap into the built-up value of their property and unlock a new high-end lifestyle.
Located in Kanata Lakes, The Normand and the Saint Émilion are two recent additions to Lépine’s portfolio of premium apartment developments.
Designed for tenants seeking an elevated lifestyle, the neighbouring buildings are outfitted with resortstyle amenities and high-class finishings.
With large open floor plans, access to green space and several on-site spaces for tenants to host guests or enjoy downtime, the appeal of rental living is becoming increasingly popular among homeowners.
Explore Kanata Lakes Leasing a unit in either of Lépine’s Kanata Lakes developments opens the door to carefree living.
Residents no longer need to worry about property maintenance or expensive repairs as they have access to a host of on-site amenities and stylish units that make the transition from a family-style home to an apartment that much easier.
The buildings are fully equipped with a fitness center and an interior saltwater pool as well as a large reception lounge, billiards table, TV room and catering kitchen for hosting parties. Each development also hosts underground parking for residents.
The apartment units themselves are spacious and bright, featuring eco-friendly fixtures, wood floors and cabinetry as well as modern kitchens and in-suite laundry.
For tenants wary of giving up their backyard or patio space, Lépine’s Kanata developments are located near ponds and nature trails as well as offer beautifully landscaped outdoor courtyards, personal garden boxes and gazebo areas with a shuffleboard and a life-sized chess game for guests to enjoy.
An attainable lifestyle The community strikes a balance between quiet comforts and city conveniences.
While the buildings provide a tranquil and relaxing place to call home, they are located just minutes away from popular shopping districts and entertainment hubs such as Tanger Outlets, Kanata Centrum and the Canadian Tire Centre.
Residents who choose to sell their home and move to a highend Lépine apartment are gaining access to a lifestyle that many previously thought was out of reach.
“Many people are selling their homes for more than they ever thought they could, which opens up a new world of living opportunities,” says company president Francis Lépine. “With a predictable cost of living through leasing a Lépine apartment, tenants can then use their earnings for activities they truly enjoy, while living in a home that checks all the boxes – and more.”
Located just minutes away from restaurants, shopping and the Kanata Lakes Golf Club, The Normand and the Saint Émilion are the perfect spot to start your next journey.
The Normand development in Kanata.
The Saint Émilion development in Kanata.
Find a Lépine apartment near you Looking to transition to a premium apartment? Lépine Apartments has several new locations across the Ottawa region for you to explore. Schedule a viewing at one of their many locations today:
• Howard Grant (Barrhaven) • Johanne’s Court (Carleton Place) • The Lépine Lodge (Renfrew) • Les Terrasses Francesca (Overbrook) • Saint Émilion (Kanata) • The Normand (Kanata)
