Business in Vancouver's "How I Did It" feature asks business leaders to explain in their own words how they achieved a business goal in the face of significant entrepreneurial challenges. In this week's issue, Clem Pelletier, founder of Rescan Environmental Services Ltd., explains why and how he decided to merge his company with U.K.-based Environmental Resources Management (ERM).
"In 1981, through encouragement and support from my wife, I started an environmental business focused on the mining and metals business. It was not necessarily the right time to venture out into a new enterprise.
"I left a very secure position with an excellent employer, interest rates were over 20%, inflation was running out of control and six months after our startup, the economy came crashing down. Fortunately, everything worked out. Rescan has been operating for nearly 32 years, and we have never recorded a loss, even during our first year of operation.
"In 2010, we restructured the company and my son Pierre took over the leadership as president and chief operating officer. The company was profitable. We were around 200 people. But we saw our major competitors were disappearing. They were all merging.
"I'm 68 years old. At my age there is a successional issue. It got to the point if we're going to continue to grow, we're going to have to get in the game that our competitors are in and buy companies. Historically, we've grown organically, and organic growth is a bit tough. The fastest you can grow organically is maybe 10% a year.
"I saw a lot of risks in buying a company. We decided that we would look at a potential partner that was bigger than us to merge with. We were approached by a number of large engineering firms. We had less interest in large engineering firms, because you're just kind of a cog in the wheel to them.
"We're not an engineering firm – we're an environmental firm. We're involved in the licensing and permitting of large projects. What I like about ERM is that it is a private company with a series of partners with 4,800 employees in 40 counties. They have 140 offices. The merger with ERM provided an opportunity for some of my managers to become partners in ERM. Up to 14 Rescan partners will become partners of ERM.
"We wanted to find a partner that would need us, in the sense that we were not just an added group of guys. We brought to ERM some real experience in the mining and metals business. We're bigger in that space than they were. From us, they're getting a lot of experience in mining, and the metals industry, and from them, we're getting experience in oil and gas, power, pharmaceuticals.
"Pierre is going to be the managing partner for Canada with offices in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. My role is president for the ERM Group in Canada. We're going to be the largest single ERM office." •
