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A rural Manitoba propane tank business has made the leap from the barnyard to the national stage with an expansion into Eastern Canada.
In the space of nine years, La Salle-based Vomar Industries Inc. has gone from being a small, backyard operation with less than $100,000 in yearly revenues to one of the country's largest tank exchange operations, with projected sales of $10 million for 2008.
One of the keys to Vomar's growth -- it expects to recondition and exchange more than 300,000 barbecue tanks this year -- has been its three-year-old strategic partnership with Superior Propane, one of the country's largest propane companies.
It was that partnership that enabled Vomar to expand its operations into Saskatchewan and Alberta in the last two years. And it's also paved the way for the company's entry six weeks ago into the massive southern Ontario market.
A Superior Propane official said Tuesday the company was so happy with the service Vomar has been providing to its barbecue-tank- exchange customers in the three Prairie provinces and Northwestern Ontario that it asked it to take over its tank-exchange operations in southern Ontario, as well.
"This is a great small business story," Noel Bernier, Superior Propane's regional operations manager for the Prairies and Northwestern Ontario, said in an interview Tuesday.
"He (Vomar founder Marcel Vouriot) has become a real expert in the barbecue-tank-resale business," Bernier said. "He has also been a fantastic strategic partner for us, and if our relationship continues to grow the way it has been (growing), I could see the day when we would want Marcel to be our exclusive strategic partner in Canada."
Vouriot said he's hoping for that and a whole lot more.
"It's our vision to go coast to coast," the farmer/businessman said in an interview. "And once we've established ourselves in very province in Canada, our future plans are definitely to... look at going south (into the United States)."
With last month's expansion into Southern Ontario -- to accommodate the move, Vomar opened a new distribution centre near Hamilton -- Vomar services more than 1,000 retail customers through its fast-growing Tank Traders barbecue tank exchange program.
Under the program, Vomar collects empty barbeque tanks for retailers across the Prairies and Ontario, reconditions them, refills them with propane, and hands them back to retailers to sell back to the public.
It's growing customer list includes some of the giants of the retail sector, including Wal-Mart Canada, Canada Safeway, and leading convenience stores operators, including 7-Eleven, Mac's, Esso, and Mohawk/Husky.
Tanks from the Prairies and Northwestern Ontario are handled at Vomar's refurbishing plant/distribution centre near LaSalle.
The job of refurbishing and refilling tanks from Southern Ontario has been contracted out to another company in St. Jacobs, which is near Hamilton.
Vouriot said Vomar gained about 500 new customers overnight when it took on Superior Propane's barbeque tank customers in Ontario. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, he said, adding he expects to more than double that number in 2009.
"We plan on adding our own customers to our expansion next year," he said. "We just want to make sure these customers are taken care of before we take on any more."
With the opening of the new Ontario distribution centre -- it also has one in Red Deere, Alta. -- Vomar employs about 60 people during its peak spring, summer, fall period, including about 20 in Manitoba.
During the slower winter months, that number shrinks by about one-third in Manitoba and by half elsewhere.
Vouriot, who continues to own and operate a 97-hectare grain farm and a 1,000-hog operation near LaSalle, said Vomar got into the tank refurbishing business to create extra work for its employees during the winter months when its main line of work -- refurbishing farm equipment -- slows down.
murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca
© 2008 Winnipeg Free Press. All Rights Reserved.
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