Safe and hygienic food is something we take for granted every time we shop in a grocery store.
Designing and manufacturing food processing equipment to make sure those standards are realized is a full-time job for Trevor Spinney and the staff at Charlottetown Metal Products (CMP).
“Businesses can fail based on the magnitude of a recall, or the black mark to their corporate name—not to mention that harm that they could cause to the general public,” said Spinney, the company’s president.
The company, sitting on 33 acres of land on North York River Road off Route 2, is currently in the midst of a 50,000 square-foot expansion, which began in September and is expected to be completed in June.
The expanded space will be used entirely for manufacturing, said Spinney. This will allow the company to relocate its existing manufacturing work and free up space for more room for assembly and material preparation, fabrication and welding. As well, the expansion will be equipped with high ceilings and six, 10-tonne overhead cranes for larger manufacturing projects.
“(The expansion) has tripled or quadrupled our manufacturing space, and that’s exciting,” he said. “It takes what may have been a constraint in the future—about our ability to grow into a certain revenue—and it blows the doors off.”
Spinney added the expansion will more than double the company’s revenue from around $15-$20 million to $40-$50 million.
The company launched in 1958 as CMP Equipment, which focused on fish processing equipment (and metal culverts). It dropped the culvert manufacturing, and with the collapse of the Atlantic cod fishery about 20 years ago, it expanded its focus to include designing and manufacturing hygienic food processing equipment for berry, vegetable, seafood and fruit producers. The majority of its clients are meat and potato food processors, Spinney said.
“Yeah, we say we’re ‘meat and potatoes’ guys,” he said. “Between French fries, potato chips and beef, pork and poultry, that would be about 80 per cent of our business.”
The company has gone through changes of ownership over the years, including last year when Richmond, B.C.’s FPS (Food Process Solutions) acquired a majority share of CMP (a division of FPS).
FPS specializes in designing and manufacturing food freeze tunnels and spiral freezers.
The B.C. company also has a North American and global presence, which works well for CMP’s goals to expand its exports into further in the U.S. but also in Europe and South America.
“They’re in expand mode as well,” said Spinney. “CMP isn’t strangers to international business. FPS takes us four steps further into that global marketplace.”
The company’s P.E.I. customers include Cavendish Farms and Wyman's. Off Island, they sell and ship equipment in Canada, and in the U.S. as far as California and Idaho. CMP has about 30-40 core projects, but the company also meets customer’s needs with custom equipment. “If you can dream of it being built … we can pretty well design and fabricate it,” said Spinney.
CMP has more than 100 employees, and by the end of 2021, it’s hoping to have 130 employees. They don’t look too far to fill vacancies. The company has already hired two Holland College welding students to start once they’ve finished school, and eight engineers from the past three UPEI faculty of sustainable design engineering graduation classes.
Spinney said CPM is planning to attend UPEI’s career fair in the next couple of weeks to see “who wants to build really neat things, because that’s what we do.”
Nick Krouglicof, dean of the faculty, said a unique aspect of the program is that it has as part of its curriculum design projects between students and industry clients.
“Aside from the technical skills, it helps develop students’ professional skills. So, things like teamwork, ethics, impact on the environment and lifelong learning,” he said. “This is what sets them apart. Any engineering school tends to give students technical skills. But the ability to work in a team and interact with a client is really what makes it unique. And, this is what we find clients are looking for.”
Born in Vancouver, Spinney moved to the Island with his family and joined CMP nine years ago. One quirky idea he brought to the company was the practice of ringing a bell after someone gets a large sale or wins a big project. Around three years ago, a bell moved from the sales area to the top of a set of stairs overlooking the shop floor. It gives the successful employee a bit of glory, and gets everyone excited about the accomplishment, he said.
“They actually take video selfies competing with each other as to who can ring it the loudest,” said Spinney with a laugh. “They won’t get an Oscar, I can tell you that.”
