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Trillium Converting builds its business with a focus on its core capability-paper and paperboard sheeting-and a concentration on customer service
In the era of the mega-corporation, as paper companies continue to merge and buy in an effort to survive, entrepreneurs find ways to exist and thrive. Often, survival is maintained by finding a niche that is less capital intensive, can benefit from experience, and can achieve flexibility in customer service that large corporations can't usually attain.
Trillium Converting, a contract converter based in Ottawa, Ont., has found its niche and combined that with several key customers to enable it to survive even during some economic low points in the six years of its existence. The family-run company is led by an industry veteran who sometimes "puts on his overalls "to maintain equipment and relies on his network of industry contacts to generate new business.
With a staff of 47 people and a workload of sheeting about 25,000 tons of paper and paperboard this year, the company seeks growth through its ability to be more flexible and focused on what it does than its primary customers, says Jean-Pierre "J.E" Dupre. Those primary customers are paper producers, merchants, and printers, mostly in a 100-mile radius of Ottawa.
BASED IN PAPER. Dupre's background is pure paper industry. Beginning in the mid-1970s, he worked in mill construction across Canada. He then joined Lamb-Grays Harbor in the late 1970s and stayed there until the mid-1980s. At Lamb-Grays, he worked in various geographic regions and in numerous parts of the company, including starting up equipment, servicing equipment, performing troubleshooting, sales, and training mill personnel on such products as sheeters, roll handling and wrapping lines, and automatic grinder feed systems.
In 1987, Dupre left Lamb-Grays to join Domtar, which at that time was building the Windsor, Que., mill. His tenure at Domtar included several mill-specific positions, as well as being division manager of converting and material handling. He stayed with Domtar until 1997, when he resigned to start up Trillium. Domtar remains one of Trillium's customers. Other customers include Abitibi-Consolidated, Rolland Paper (now part of Cascades), Unisource, Bunton-Reid, Graphic Resource, and several Ottawa-and Toronto-based printers.
Dupre describes Trillium's objective as helping improve customer service and especially just-in-time delivery. "We also...