Ramsay Group, a family-owned metal works and industrial manufacturer that spanned 112 years and four generations in Greater Victoria, has sold its land and buildings and will auction off its heavy equipment in a winding down of one of the region’s most durable companies.
But another local industrial player plans to build off Ramsay’s solid foundations. Ralmax Group owner Ian Maxwell is buying the building and land of the Sidney-based Ramsay Group to add more work space for his shipbuilding and industrial businesses.
The purchase accelerates a long-planned modernization and expansion at Maxwell’s Point Hope Maritime-United Engineering’s Harbour Road property on the Upper Harbour.
No sale price was disclosed. The assessed value of the Ramsay property is $4.67 million.
It also marks the end of Ramsay’s high-profile operations at 2066 Henry Ave.
Ramsay built massive, multi-million-dollar machinery for the mining, forestry and transportation sectors.
Many of the projects have been wheeled down Victoria International Airport’s runway in the dead of night to be shipped to global customers. One example was a $20-million coal-slinger sent to a North Vancouver shipping terminal two years ago.
The Ramsay sale, which closes Aug. 1, is the domino Maxwell needed.
“This actually moves us very far ahead,” Maxwell said Wednesday. “But it also means that we are not going to be building a great big building downtown like we wanted to.”
Previous plans called for a $10-million, 30,000 square-foot shop on Harbour Road.
Instead, Maxwell will now be relocating much of United Engineering Ltd. and Harjim Enterprises to the 40,000-square-foot buildings at the Ramsay site in Sidney.
A section of United Engineering building and the Island Plate and Steel building will be coming down, he said.
United Engineering will be “tremendously” more flexible and more efficient in its home, he said.
Maxwell bought that firm in 2006. Since then, cramped quarters have been an issue, forcing the company to turn down work at times. The latest deal for new space solves that, he said.
The fabrication shop, plate-burning and automated beam line will go to Sidney, while the machine shop will remain in Victoria.
Once the buildings are removed from Harbour Road, that opens up space for Point Hope Maritime shipyard to extend an existing spur line, install a new spur line of up to 240 feet and create room for a third line in the future.
“That’s a big driver for us,” Maxwell said.
Lengthening one line and building another will happen in Sidney, hopefully by early next year, he said.
Spur lines are critical to Point Hope’s future because it allows the company to take in more vessels and larger vessels at the ship repair yard.
As the Victoria site is cleared and new entrances are developed, that paves the way for another of Maxwell’s dreams — a 600-foot-long floating graving dock.
The spark to start that construction will be a ship-repair or refit contract requiring a graving dock. When that happens “we’ll be basically ready to start the graving dock,” Maxwell said.
The sale winds up Ramsay’s multi-purpose machine shop and metal fabrication plant at Sidney, where brothers Greg and Fraser Ramsay have been running the business their great-grandfather, George Dyer Ramsay, founded in Victoria in 1903.
In 1990, Ramsay purchased its current location, where it built headquarters and shop space.
Maxwell said he approached the family about selling. The brothers will stay on for an undetermined period to help with the change-over.
“Greg and Fraser ran a wonderful business,” Maxwell said. “They’ve been good competitors to us. I feel very lucky that they are going to stay around and try and help us through the transition period.”
A public auction of Ramsay’s fabrication and machine tooling equipment is set for Aug. 20 at 9 a.m. Items include boring mills, lathes, radial arm drills, hydraulic presses and welding equipment.
Between 45 and 50 union tradespeople are working at the Point Hope-United Engineering site.
Unions representing workers at Ramsay and Maxwell’s companies are working on the implications of the sale.
Maxwell expects that as work increases, jobs will be offered to Ramsay staff on a priority basis.
Ramsay had about
30 steady workers, but numbers have dropped because of layoffs as the company winds down, Greg Ramsay said.
Unions representing Ramsay workers were not commenting on the sale on Wednesday.
The Ramsay family said the company has been affected by the international economic conditions.
“For the last year and a bit we’ve been going pretty good,” Ramsay said. But when oil prices declined, “a lot of our export work was being reined in because of all the changes in the global marketplace.”
