Usually, the first three months of the year are the slowest for Friesens Corporation in Altona, but the first quarter of 2019 proved to be record-setting for Canada's largest printer of hardcover books.
"The plants have been very full," said CEO Chad Friesen. "We've been hitting some records with the number of press impressions that we've made, the number of books that we've made. It's just been all around a very, very strong start to the year for 2019," Friesen said, adding that revenue numbers are up 18 percent.
He attributes this success to rising book sales coupled with low supply across North America.
"While Friesens continued to invest in technology and facilities over the last 10 years, some of our competitors did not and some of them are no longer in the marketplace. So, as the book market has recovered and is growing there's fewer book manufacturers like Friesens in the marketplace to fulfill some of that demand," he said.
"As we were upgrading some existing equipment, we started to get the sense that there was a shortage of hardcover capacity in the market. We were not even finished installing the second replacement book line, and we made the decision to purchase a third hardcover line," Friesen said.
This will open up between 15 and 20 new jobs, on top of an existing 30 vacancies. Friesens continues to rely on international recruitment strategies to engage potential employees since the local market is too small to fulfill the company's hiring needs, Friesen said.
"That's going to continue to be a challenge for us as we invest in new technology; that technology needs people to operate it, and so we expect that that's going to be a significant part of our future, is just trying to find and retain good people to keep everything rolling."
The company plans to embark on an overseas mission soon to promote their business, this time possibly in Eastern Europe.
"There are good people to be found all over the world; we just have to look a little bit further than we used to," he explained. "At one point every employee at Friesens resided and was born and raised in the town of Altona, and today over a third of our staff commute in, for instance, and weren't born in Altona."
"We have to keep thinking about if we're going to be a global player and a large growing interest in a small community, it's just more and more important for us to find ways of bringing people to the community rather than trying to just focus on hiring what's very much a shortage of people in the local job market," noted Friesen.
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Fri, Apr 26, 8:01 AM
Manufacturing, Full-time
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