Business Profile: Metal Corbert

When recessions or economic downturns hit, companies unfortunately close their doors. The buildings stand empty for a while until some brave entrepreneur steps forward, feeling a sprightly fresh breeze in the economic air and repurposes the once closed building to suit their needs.

Although not unheard of, it is rare to see a very similar business open up in the same spot as the one that went under.

Metal Corbert, in Grand-Mère, Quebec is such a company. The land where the company is situated used to be owned by Group Fermont, a metal shop that was around for about 18 years and closed its doors in 2008. Lucie Godin, the general manager for Metal Corbert, had a front row seat to this tale—she was the shop manager of the defunct Group Fermont.

“Group Fermont went bankrupt about six years ago, then a third party bought the shop and formed Metal Corbert in 2011,” she says. “The new owner is a company called Gilbert Towing…a full transport company that bought Group Fermont and started Metal Corbert.”

According to Godin, one of the strengths of Metal Corbert is being owned by a freight company. “They ship the plate here. It gets transformed—cut, bent, shaped, welded and painted—and then shipped out to our customer.”

The company sits on about three hectares with the main 16,000 sq. ft. shop dominating the site and a 2,400 sq. ft. assembly area and a 3,500 sq. ft. paint shop making up the complex.

When Metal Corbert took over the location it was practically empty, recalls Godin. “We had to re-equip the whole shop. Only the overhead crane was there.”

Another challenge was getting customers. “Initially, to get clients we had to convince them that we were still in business,” she laughs.

There are lots of mines in the region, and the pulp and paper industry is still a large factor in the area’s economy. “Shawinigan had a lot of wood industry—a lot slowed down.”

Machitech product specialist, Patrick Salois, and Metal Corbert’s general manager Lucie Godin stand in front of the company’s Machitech plasma cutter. PHOTO: NESTOR GULA

Metal Corbert works for these industries as a custom metal shop, cutting, welding and machining steel to create new machinery or any parts needed by these industries. Godin notes that one new sector they have been supplying of late is the green economy. “We are building components for windmills for Hydro Quebec,” she says.

“Since we opened in 2011, business has been picking up. It went down at beginning of 2013 and started to pick up at the end of 2013, and it’s growing now.”

The business relies solely on cutting and fabricating for industries in the region. “There are no exports. We support mostly local businesses and some mining companies in Ontario,” she says.

Despite Godin’s positive spin of the economy and Metal Corbert’s future prospects, she does acknowledge that hard times still abound in the area. “Three shops have closed in the last four years in this area,” she exclaims. “Almost 2,000 employees lost jobs.”

She admits being in a rural setting might present some challenges to getting and retaining good staff, but she has not encountered that yet. “We have no problems getting good experienced staff,” she says. “We have 12 to 15 permanent staff, and we will hire contractors. Our plan is to have 20 to 25 full-time employees eventually.

Godin notes that one of the company’s primary clients is doing very well and there is more and more work coming Metal Corbert’s way. Finding more hands will not be a problem, she states. “There are a lot of good experienced workers in the area. We take care of the workers—the salary is not bad and the environment is very good. Here in Shawinigan there is no traffic and the cost of living is low.”

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Metal Corbert has also fostered a strong reputation not just amongst its customers but within the local community. “We sponsor events in town. Group Fermont was also well known in town, supporting various events, and we have continued doing this.”

Most of the training for workers is done in-house. “We have a qualified welder in the shop who will train and assist the junior welders,” says Godin.

Fifty per cent of Metal Corbert’s business is subcontract work of cutting metal. “The cutting table helps to get the customers in to cut the metal,” says Godin. “We are then able to put value-added services onto the cut pieces by bending them, welding, sandblasting and painting. It’s a full solution.”

The company works with CNC plasma cutters and not a laser because the thickness of steel they usually encounter is ½-inch or higher.

While most of its equipment is older, especially the manual milling machines, this does not worry Godin. “We have no real need for automation as most of our work is custom,” she explains. The one exception to the older equipment is the technology that makes up the core of Metal Corbert’s production—a very modern 8- x 20-foot Machitech Diamond Cut CNC plasma cutter powered by a Hypertherm HyPerformance HPR400XD plasma system, with EDGE Pro CNC and ProNest software.

Godin describes the machine as the heart of the operation.

“Compared to our older machine, we are getting 50 per cent better consumable life,” she says. She also praises the cut quality from Hypertherm’s True Hole technology and is pleased at the ease of use. “We have one operator on this machine trained by Machitech.”

They chose this machine because the company’s older CNC laser could not keep up with the workflow and the cut quality was lacking. “The support, installation, training and service from Machitech is excellent,” she enthuses. “There is no downtime on our Machitech plasma cutting machine.”

Another big hurdle Metal Corbert had to surmount was to keep the consistency of its production at a high level. “Getting ISO 9001 certificate helps us in the tracking of the production and quality control,” says Godin. “We have a welding engineer that is contracted that helps us maintain the quality.”

Godin is bullish about Metal Corbert’s future. She notes that the local economy is picking up and they are well diversified in the industries they service.