If you blinked, you might miss Leemark Enterprises as you drive by the firm’s Irish School Rd. location.
It’s a safe bet, however, that is about all that gets missed at the Dresden-area mould and die manufacturer.
Tucked in the 6,200 square foot building is some of Canada’s leading edge Computerized Numerical Control (CNC) equipment.
The company took part last week in an open house organized with the help of the Chatham-Kent Economic Development Department.
For owner Dave McCaughrin, purchasing the latest technology is a strategy that has paid off and kept his business and its five employees going strong while others in his field fell by the wayside.
“We aren’t going to be the biggest shop in the world but there’s no reason we can’t be as good as anyone else,” he said. “We need to be able to respond to customers’ needs. We need to be able to run with the big dogs or stay on the porch.”
Walking through the shop, he points out machine after machine that illustrates his thinking.
“This machine is 12 years old and it was the first machine that was PC based,” he said. “Instead of programming it, you just plugged in your network cable and dumped the program right on the machine.”
“This is the first P200 in Canada, and he’s the first P300 in Canada,” he said. “And this one (pointing at his newest acquisition, a 2016 Okuma Machining Centre, a 5-axis unit) is the first of its size in Canada.”
The revolutionary thinking at Leemark doesn’t end with equipment, however. The company is involved with joint venture initiatives in which a group of smaller shops co-operate on large contracts.
Controller Janet O’Mara said the idea of a mini-consortium makes sense for her firm.
“We’ve been speaking with the Excellence in Manufacturing Consortium,” she said.
“It’s a different approach,” said McCaughrin. “It used to be hush, hush and everything was a trade secret. By working together we can bid on larger, more profitable contracts that we couldn’t do alone.”
Geoff Wright of Chatham-Kent economic development said celebrating local success and bringing the business sector together is an important part of what his group does.
“Tourists don’t know borders and neither do manufacturers,” he said. “They just want to get the job done effectively.”
A number of business and financial groups attended the open house and Wright said “every conversation here today was a highly meaningful conversation.”
The day included tours by secondary school students, something Stu McFadden, deputy director of economic development, said is vital.
“We need to get kids out to workplaces so they can see first-hand what the work is like and determine if they want to have a career in a particular field,” he said.
McCaughrin concurred, noting that a student he hired from a co-op program 15 years ago is still with the firm.
“The whole point is to give them exposure. One trip to a company can be worth more than surfing the web.”
Leemark was founded in 1976 and primarily manufactures moulds and dies for the automotive industry.
“We learned during the slowdown of 2008 and 2009 that the shops that are surviving were those that had a lot of experience or were producing extremely high quality,” he said. “We’ve used that as a blueprint to go forward.”
