Dave Cattapan never thought he’d take part in a Cinderella story.
But as he accepted the Bradford Board of Trade’s 2021 Economic Development Award on Dec. 15 at MiTek Canada’s new facility on Stirling Crescent, Cattapan told a different tale.
“It was a challenge to getting here. And all of you were a really big help to getting us through that. We should be giving you the award,” Cattapan said to the staff and town councillors at the award event.
“The challenges were incredible. Who would have thought – we thought we’d be moving into a nice and easy construction (season) in the middle of July – who knew we were going to be hit by an alien invasion that created all these challenges and things – and all these hoops we had to fly through?” He said of the COVID-19 pandemic’s arrival.
“Before we knew it, we had to be out of the old building. All of a sudden I became Cinderella and I had to be out of there (quickly). I think we gave them the keys to (the old place) on Dec. 31st, when we should have been here in July.”
The new 240,000 square-foot state-of-the-art facility sat mostly empty, with many of MiTek’s technical, engineering, accounting and programming employees still working from home, said Cattapan’s executive assistant, Andrea Bacon.
MiTek, one of the largest suppliers of galvanized steel connectors used in joining (roof) trusses, has been in business for more than 50 years, she said. They also sell all the equipment to build trusses, including blades, saws and presses.
Although Mitek doesn’t sell to the public, they do sell to Home Depot and Home Hardware.
Bacon said MiTek has created Sapphire Structure software that allows users to design their own house in 4D.
Yet it wasn’t a software issue causing the headaches on Stirling Crescent, however, just about everything else did.
In the middle of the shut-downs due to the pandemic, Cattapan said they were also dealing with supply-chain issues, facing delays with both steel and cardboard boxes.
And then the orders started to pick up in what has traditionally been their quiet winter season, said operations manager Justin Neil.
“Generally, the busiest time of year was the fall, but what’s been happening is just as it’s getting warmer out, the building season has extended and so now we’re busy right through the fall, into the winter. Generally, in January, the temperatures plummet and things calm down for us, but it was going gangbusters, people were still buying product. We ended up getting into this building late and we were expecting to be able to build up some inventory for the building season and it just didn’t happen. So we moved smack in the middle of our busiest time of year. Couldn’t have happened at a worse time from a sales standpoint,” he said with a chuckle behind his mask.
In addition to receiving more orders than they’d ever previously recorded, Neil said adding a night shift became a challenge due to the shortage of employees available in the area.
After Deputy Mayor James LeDuc presented the award to Cattapan, he said the Bradford Board of Trade’s third annual Economic Development award was created by council to be given to larger employers with 25 or more staff in the area.
The criteria considers how many employees are hired and the investment in the community in prior years. LeDuc said it was a tight competition for the 2021 medal with six entries vying for recognition.
“It was just that MiTek was the one we decided this year was the true winner. They’ve been dealing with building for four or five years now so we’re just happy to see them in it. It’s a large investment for MiTek – they were the very first to buy into our (Bradford) employment lands which was important to us. So we’re appreciative of their support and appreciative of their patience to be in our community.”
