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Brave new weld: Island steel specialist celebrates a century and forges ahead

It started as a small repair and service shop, expanded its scope through a world war and a forest-industry boom and most recently delivered a 231-tonne coal stacker-reclaimer on time and on budget, despite the pandemic.

It started as a small repair and service shop, expanded its scope through a world war and a forest-industry boom and most recently delivered a 231-tonne coal stacker-reclaimer on time and on budget, despite the pandemic.

But as United Engineering, a specialist in steel fabrication and machining and the largest machine shop on the Island, celebrates its centenary, the company is focused on the fight ahead.

There’s little room for complacency if you’re trying to establish yourself as a global player and have made a ­statement that B.C. can still compete with anyone.

Ian Maxwell, founder of the Ralmax Group, which bought United Engineering in 2002, said the company has a bright future. It stepped into the spotlight with last year’s coal stacker-reclaimer delivery to EMS-Technology to be used at Neptune Terminals in North Vancouver.

Maxwell said that project sent a message about what United is capable of.

The machine, which slings and stacks coal, had an estimated economic impact of $23.6 million to this region, given the time, labour and suppliers used, and Maxwell believes it’s just the beginning.

“The key is not just the quality of people we have, but it’s about giving them the tools to succeed,” he said, noting that has meant ensuring they have the space to expand and the kind of modern equipment and machinery that makes them efficient and competitive. “That keeps you whole when the economy turns down and people are fighting over lower prices … then we can still be a player.”

United is one of eight firms that make up the Ralmax Group of companies, and as a global player, it doesn’t look much like it would have at its beginning 100 years ago. It doesn’t much resemble the company Russ Jennings joined in 1989, either.

“We do still try and maintain some of the things we’ve done in the past, like service repair and smaller-market jobs like back in the day, but other than that, we have come leaps and bounds,” said the 32-year veteran and shop superintendent.

Jennings said physically there’s no comparison, as United is now split between a smaller facility attached to Point Hope Shipyard and the 40,000-square-foot shop in Sidney that was once home to Ramsay Machine Works.

“The change really is stunning,” he said, noting it’s been especially noticeable since Ralmax stepped in and started investing in modern equipment and automation, which has set the company apart from the competition.

Metal fabricator Kyla McCormick, the chargehand for United’s Point Hope shop, said it’s been cool to watch the company grow.

“It’s been exponential,” said the 14-year veteran. “The company keeps growing with Ian buying new companies. And I feel a real sense of job security.”

That hasn’t always been the case in this kind of trade, she said, but now United’s Victoria shop has become something of a repair and service shop doing a lot of in-house work for the Ralmax Group.

These days, the two shops are both steadily busy, keeping 45 people employed — they had more work during the pandemic as the stacker-reclaimer came together.

“When everyone was getting downtime during the pandemic, we were working overtime,” said McCormick.

Dave Bucovec, United’s general manager, said before Ralmax, United had a great location on the water next to Point Hope and great people in the shop.

After Ralmax, they had those assets and an ownership group willing to invest in the right hardware, new software and people.

Bucovec, who has been with the company for 20 years, estimates United has grown tenfold since 2002, when it was first acquired, and added some significant assets — mostly the skilled teams it inherited from acquisitions like Harjim’s structural steel shop in 2010, Ramsay Machine Works facility in Sidney in 2015 and 2017’s takeover of Leach Machine Works, which serviced marine, construction and excavation companies.

“And when Ian invests, there is horsepower behind it,” said Bucovec. “He doesn’t do things in half measures.”

Bucovec said there has been a concerted effort to modernize and ensure it’s on the cutting edge to keep pace with global competition.

There’s a saying you hear often around the workshop — if something can be shipped here from China, there’s no reason things can’t be shipped the other way.

“The tides may turn some day,” said Bucovec. “We can’t compete with their wage structure now, but who’s to say we won’t in the future?”

United has set itself up to do just that with water access at both Point Hope and Patricia Bay, via use of the airport’s runways — the way they shipped components of the stacker-reclaimer by barge to Point Hope to be assembled.

United’s office at Point Hope Shipyard has access to a deep-water port and a laydown area at the shipyard to put together and test large builds before shipping.

Bucovec said buying Ramsey was a huge piece of the puzzle, and a bit of a game-changer, as it not only doubled the size of the company, providing space to warehouse components and take on multiple jobs, but by demolishing part of United’s space at Point Hope, it also opened up room for the shipyard to expand as well.

“Buying Ramsey did a whole pile of things, all good,” Maxwell added.

If United didn’t step in to buy Ramsey, Leach and Harjim, careers, skills and legacies might have been lost. Instead, they are now part of the future of United Engineering.

According to Maxwell, a lot of the older machining and fabrication shops were family enterprises that ran out of succession plans, leaving owners forced to sell the business and more importantly, the land, to fund their retirement.

“What you find with a lot of these companies is the owner worked on the floor, runs it and then takes what he can from it,” added Bucovec. “They’ll do OK, but often they don’t reinvest and you end up with these shops that are a little rundown and it becomes an almost overwhelming investment required to get it back up and going.”

Maxwell said that has happened with alarming frequency in recent years, which in some ways fueled Ralmax’s expansion and United Engineering’s success.

Maxwell said most of the businesses he’s picked up weren’t initially on his radar, but they were going to disappear.

That was the case with United itself, which Maxwell bought because he needed the land, which was right next door to Point Hope Shipyard.

“I needed to encroach on that real estate to build the rail system [at the shipyard],” he said, noting the original plan was to partner with United.

But getting the deal done took too long, and United and its land were about to be put on the market.

“I couldn’t afford to have anyone else buy it that may not want a shipyard next door,” Maxwell said.

Ralmax stepped in, and Maxwell got more than he bargained for.

“What I’ve found out about businesses like that is they are populated by people who have chosen that career, they’ve chosen to be machinists or welders and fabricators, chosen it because that’s what they want to do with their lives,” he said. “Some very fine people came along with it.”

That led to buying other shops, and soon he had a big team of committed, talented employees.

Maxwell said to some extent, he was preserving the businesses and industrial jobs, but he argues it may even be more than that.

“People undervalue the land these businesses sit on by saying they can turn it into cash,” he said, noting when the land is sold, it means one owner gets a one-time payout.

“The way I look at it is if you want to value that land, look at what can it generate over a long period of time,” he said, noting at Ralmax, they like to focus on a 50-year span of generating careers, paycheques, taxes. “Add all that together and these lands and businesses are vastly more valuable than they’re given credit for.”

To maintain that value requires keeping them in the hands of people who won’t break them up or sell them off, or redevelop the land to fuel a retirement.

“They have to be owned by somebody who says: ‘Who is the next guy who will sit in this chair,’” said Maxwell, who wants to see these industrial assets carry on long after he’s left the office.

Next up for the company is further expansion with more investment in technology, especially on the fabrication side of things.

McCormick said she expects the firm to book more big projects like the stacker-reclaimer.

“We have shown our capabilities and that we could get it done on time, so I see us getting more of that,” she said. “The sky is the limit now. We have a good group of people with a varied skill set and we’ve proved you can throw anything at us and we’ll get it done.”

aduffy@timescolonist.com