2010 annual general meeting june 24, 2010 - Surrey Board of Trade

BN06
theVIEW fromHERE
JUNE2010
BM&M Screening
Solutions Inc.
- Always looking for a better
solution to a problem
Collin Jackson, President and Peter Humphrey, Chief Engineer
BM&M Screening Solutions
egan life as Burnaby Mill
Machine by founder Tom
umphrey, in the basement of the
amily home. He was a mechanial
engineer by trade, who worked
or a number of different compaies,
both manufacturers of sawill
equipment and engineering
onsultants that did design work
or the sawmill and lumber indusry.
The seed of the idea for this
ompany was a screen for filterng
or sorting any material, from
ood sawdust and chips to aggreates
and everything in between.
he company he worked for actully
made a screen, but it was an
ld fashioned design. He thought
e could do better and when the
irm said they weren’t interested in
is idea, he developed it himself.
Forty years on the company is
un by owners Peter Humphrey,
is brother Dave, Vice-President,
nd Collin Jackson.
Peter and Collin spoke with
ay Hudson about the busiess.
As part of the family, did
ou grow up with the idea
f being a part of the famly
business? You and your
rother became engineers
ourselves.
(PH) I was just 16 when he
ounded the company in ’68.
did a lot of drafting work,
art-time, on weekends and in
he evenings just to help the
ad out. Even in ’68 it wasn’t
is full-time job. He didn’t
ave the cash, so he kept
orking full-time, and in his
pare time, did what he could
o further the design of his
ew machine. He didn’t actully
come up with a prototype
ntil the late ‘60s.
Obviously it caught on,
ecause he’s done extremely
ell. We’re sitting in a brand
ew building here in South
urrey.
(CJ) We actually got our
wn manufacturing facility
in ’77 or ’78 in Burnaby and
operated then as Burnaby Mill
& Machine.
(PH) Through the years
we’d rented various facilities
and not one of them was really
ideal for our situation, so we
decided to build from scratch
and design to suit. We did that
in Port Kells in ’89. That facility
worked great for 15 years,
but the last 5 were kind of
cramped. So we built again,
this time in Langley.
We’ve put a couple of major
technology items in the new
factory. One of them was a rail
system, so we can manufacture
massive screens, 15’ wide and
30’ long and weigh 18,000 lbs.
In the past to get the screen
from crane to crane we had
to have a bunch of rigging to
move machines in the shop.
The new rail system allows us
to have more of an assembly
line down the whole length
of the factory We just set a
machine on a cart and roll it
into the paint booth, paint it
and then roll it out and assemble
it. Without a lot of handling
which might take four
guys an hour, so we just saved
four shop hours that weren’t
productive. We’ve eliminated a
bunch of stuff like that in our
new facility
Who’s who in the business?
(CJ) Actually I’m a
Mechanical Engineering
Technologist by training, but
I’ve been a sales and marketing
guy my whole career. I came
into BM&M as Sales Manager
and moved up to Vice
President and subsequently
President of the company.
I move into the Presidency
about 2006.
Pete is one of the owners, of
course – 50% of the company,
and past president. He stepped
down to become Chief
Engineer because he loves
it. He’s a world class troubleshooter.
He is a competitive
advantage to the company in
this position and he likes to
do it!
(PH) I like the challenge of
tackling new materials and see
if we can get them to screen to
the specs of our customers.
Dave Humphrey is
the Vice-President.
Unfortunately he couldn’t
join us today.
(PH) Dave does all the
engineering for the screens
as opposed to the application
engineering – the industrial
drawings and things, all the
innards of the screens to make
sure that the shop guys know
exactly what they are building.
He’s also the overall plant
manager and he looks after
staffing and all things related to
the running of the shop. Today
he’s off doing some work in the
field for a customer.
BM&M started in forestry,
wood products, but has now
diversified greatly. Tell me
about the transition?
(CJ) We started in forest
products, moved into the
grain industry, into some of
the animal feeds, and then we
get into chemicals, bulk and
powder and food and recycle,
and more recently bio-fuel.
So today, BM&M is dealing
with many different industries.
We sell products all around
the world today, and we have
licensees set up in Australia
and Europe.
We’ve taken a brilliant idea
at the time, and we’re applying
today’s technology. We have
a state of the art facility and
we’re partnering with other
lower mainland companies
with laser technologies for
cutting and state of the art
manufacturing techniques
to do what Tom Humphrey
envisioned 42 years ago. We’re
using the business knowledge
of the past generation and the
technology of today, and marrying
them together in a way
that we can go to the market
with integrity.
How many people do you
employ now?
We have about 42. Some of
them are in the US; we have
some US sales and marketing
guys, but all the rest of them
are based here in the corporate
offices.
With the financial and
economic collapse of 2008,
how has this company
faired?
(CJ) We did very well up
until this past winter. We came
into the downturn with a huge
backlog of orders because our
factory wasn’t big enough.
We were running flat out, so
when the downturn came, we
worked on what was in the
order bank. And because we
had market diversification
going for us, we were getting
enough out of our various markets
to keep us going.
Many projects stalled due to
the inability of our customers
to get money from their banks,
especially in the US. It’s impossible
for a business to borrow
money in the US right now
and if it is a viable business
they are actually looking for
free money from the government,
so everything stopped
for a year.
By February our backlog
was gone and we actually had
to lay some people off, which
hadn’t happened in seven or
eight years. We’ve brought
most of them back, but we’ve
still got a half dozen guys laid
off. But business is recovering
again, and we’re getting a little
bit of work from many of our
markets, so the business plan
of diversifying and then using
technologies available to us to
lower our costs by being more
efficient are paying off. In fact
we were running our factory
so hard that the more orders
we did, the less efficient we
were. We needed to get bigger
and we needed to get more
efficient. For our business to
survive, we had to grow.
Where do you go from
here? Are there any new
product ideas that you’d care
to share?
(CJ) Well, we just released
a larger version of one of our
screen models called a Super-
Deck. I was just in Chicago
for the big Bulk & Powder
Exposition – the biggest in the
world – where we introduced
the Super-Deck to the market
for the first time. This new
product provided some marketing
potential and opportunities.
It will also give us a
product line where we had a
little gap.