NorFab racks up another award

NorFab Building Components Ltd. of here received a regional business achievement award at the Ontario Global Traders Awards ceremony for Northern Ontario in Sudbury last Wednesday.
“We were pleasantly surprised,” said sales manager Brian Hagarty, adding Dave Bourgeault of the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines office here nominated the local business in the “Market Expansion (Product)” category.
The Ontario Global Trader Awards are a new venture by the provincial government and Bank of Montreal to recognize outstanding achievements in job creation and exporting among small and medium-sized businesses.
“I personally think they’re going a long way to encourage other companies to look at expanding their markets,” Hagarty noted.
U.S. sales at NorFab have doubled annually since 1994, and exports now represent more than half of its business. Still, Hagarty felt “the sky’s the limit” for the export market.
“Just across that river, we have a big fat golden cash cow with 250 million people that buy just like everybody else does,” he said.
“We have a large retailer in [Colorado] we’ve been working with for five years,” he noted. “This year, they’ll buy 10,000 garden sheds in addition to what they’ve ordered before.”
Hagarty also revealed NorFab recently hooked up with another large U.S. retailer, resulting in its products showing up in another 150 outlets.
With a new building up and full of inventory, Hagarty said there was nowhere to go but up down the road.
“We are looking at expanding once again in the future,” he said. “We hired 14 people in the past two weeks and are looking to hire maybe 20 more in a short while.”
Meanwhile, as a regional winner, NorFab is in the running for a provincial award which will be named at a ceremony March 25.
“There’s a possibility we could win the provincial award. Knock on wood,” Hagarty laughed.