Reprinted from Grain Journal January/February 2014 Issue
When a company’s brand reputation is as strong as the steel products it has produced for more than 113 years, it’s safe to say it’s in it for the long haul. Such is the case with Winnipeg, MB-based Westeel, one of Canada’s leading manufacturers of steel storage products and a division of Vicwest, Inc.
The company offers a wide range of on-farm and commercial storage solutions for today’s agricultural industry, as well as custom storage solutions to meet the needs of the petroleum and industrial sectors.
“One of the pillars of our business,” says Westeel President André Granger, “is that we have this incredibly strong brand, very well recognized for quality and service. We’ve tried to live through the history of the company and continue to deliver those services and that quality product looking forward. Our vision is to be a global leader in storage systems for food and water and fuel. That’s our core vision.”
To that end, the company announced in May that it had acquired Italy-based PTM Technology to serve its global agricultural customers better. PTM Technology engineers, designs, and manufactures a broad range of automated grain handling systems including chain, bucket, and belt conveyors; grain sampling; and dust collection equipment.
With its sales and engineering capability in Madrid, Spain, newly opened office in Mumbai, India, and now PTM, Westeel continues to build critical mass in key overseas markets and position itself as one of a handful of companies that will benefit from the trend for continued investment in post-harvest infrastructure on a global basis. Given that the company also currently exports its products to more than 30 countries around the world, it’s clear that Westeel is well on its way to realizing its goals on a global scale.
However, despite employing nearly 500 people (many of whom are multi-generational), Westeel maintains a small company mindset that its leadership leverages as a competitive advantage.
“Because we are somewhat smaller, we can actually be a bit more entrepreneurial than a large, highly structured company,” says Ryan Baldwin, vice president–sales and marketing. “I think that our performance, warranty, and support of our customers are really a core part of our company,” he adds.
Humble and Historic Beginnings
Like many success stories, the company had modest beginnings rooted in the history of its locale. Westeel Ltd. was born officially in 1905, founded by W. J. McMartin in a tiny metal shop situated on the banks of the Seine River in Winnipeg, first known as “Winnipeg Ceiling and Roofing Company.”
“We were established in 1905,” says Jim Weeda, business manager, Americas. “In fact, we are still in the same site that the original plant was in back in 1905. We’ve always been involved in the steel business – stamp ceiling tiles, metal frames in windows, etc. We have been manufacturing galvanized bins since 1923,” he notes.
In those early days, the company’s rapid expansion in western North America led to the acquisition of several well-known companies in 1926, which was renamed as Western Steel Products Ltd. This new, innovative group designed and produced the first corrugated steel granary. These began to dot the western Canadian prairies providing safe, weather-protected, on-farm storage of harvested grain products waiting to be hauled to the railroad siding and elevators. By 1930, the company had formulated a vast manufacturing network which was known by the trade name Westeel.
In 1938, the year preceding the start of World War II, Westeel opened a small office in Ottawa, ON, to facilitate its dealings with the Canadian Department of National Defense better. The department contracted with all the facilities of Western Steel Products nationwide to supply manufactured and assembled equipment to the Royal Canadian Navy, the Canadian Army and the Royal Canadian Air Force. Notably, apart from a complete changeover of product lines to wartime orders, this was an era that saw women employed on the shop floors for the first time.
With the end of war in 1945, the company reconverted to peacetime production of its established and varied lines of steel products for use in industrial plants, road building, oil production, agricultural construction, and general construction work.
Modernization and Expansion
Among the company’s many milestones was the introduction of its Wide-Corr grain bin in 1982, which brought with it a new dimension to grain storage, with a larger series of grain bins for major farming operations and the grain handling industry.
Today, Westeel’s agricultural storage products include grain bins, hopper tanks, and smoothwall hoppered bins for storing grain, seed, and fertilizer. The company maintains five manufacturing facilities in Olds, AB; Saskatoon, SK; Regina, SK; Tisdale, SK; and Winnipeg.
In addition to a longstanding commitment to quality and a reputation for innovative engineering, Westeel’s application of the latest technology has made it a leader in the steel products manufacturing industry and helped it become one of the first ISO 9001-certified bin manufacturing companies in North America.
“The ISO is an internationally-recognized quality system that we operate under,” says Weeda. “Every year, we go through audits to ensure that our quality standards and our processes are in place, that we’re delivering on time, that we’re looking after the warranty properly, and that we’re following our procedures, whether that be in the office or in the plant during the manufacturing process, and whether our tools are calibrated,” he explains.
Unlike the early days, the tools of the trade have become a lot more sophisticated as automated manufacturing lines have been introduced. While automation requires a substantial investment and necessitates regular maintenance and safety audits, the benefits of modernization far outweigh the costs according to Weeda.
“We’ve done a lot of upgrading within the plant over the years with robots,” he says. “We have robotic packing lines. We have a brand new, fully-automated assembly line for bin roofs. So we’re constantly changing, constantly upgrading equipment through the plant to try and not only manufacture more efficiently, but whenever you use any kind of automation, the repeatability, the fit-up, and the accuracy are so much better. You gain efficiency, but you also really gain quality,” Weeda explains.
While corrugated, galvanized bins continue to be a core part of the Westeel business globally, the company recently announced the expansion of its line of smoothwall bins in North America by partnering with Norstar Industries in Morris, MB, a manufacturer of grain handling products, to build the new bins, called the Magnum GN™ and the Magnum FN™. Although Westeel has produced and sold smoothwall bins successfully for more than 30 years, the welded, freight-intensive products have had limited distribution to date.
“It is a totally different market,” says Weeda, who points out that the smoothwall bins are “more of a regional type market than the actual galvanized product, which you can ship anywhere.”
“The new partnership not only expands our product line but also allows us to offer cost-effective smoothwall bins in new regions,” adds President Granger. “We have been manufacturing smoothwall bins since the early 80s and have had great success in Alberta and Saskatchewan.”
The new Magnum bins are available now in select Manitoba locations and also in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota.
Ultimately, Westeel is not unlike so many other successful companies competing in a global marketplace in that, at the end of the day, it really comes down to building on a strong foundation and being true to your vision and mission.
“We want our colleagues from all parts of the world to support each other and focus on continuing to grow the business and deliver this quality product and service that the company was really built upon over the last 100 years,” Granger concludes.
