A keen eye for business

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This article was published 05/11/2018 (2499 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Vomar Industries, headquartered in La Salle and with Tank Trader locations across Canada, recently entered the U.S. market.

Vomar president Marcel Vouriot was excited on Oct. 30 as his company had just completed the purchase of a tank exchange company in Missouri. Vouriot sees this as the first step in duplicating his success in the Canadian market.

Tank Traders is a national propane tank exchange program. It provides filled propane tanks for gas barbecues when a buyer returns their empty tank. Filled cylinders can also be purchased for about $20 more if a buyer doesn’t have an empty tank.

“We’re going to do what we’ve done in Canada,” he said. “We are currently operating from Vancouver Island to Truro, Nova Scotia.”

He was also recently honoured when his company was a finalist for a Manitoba Chambers of Commerce award in the medium-sized business category.

Vouriot is staying close to his roots, as he runs his business from the farm that belonged to his parents, Eugene and Denise. The youngest of nine children, Vouriot attended school in La Salle and graduated from Winnipeg’s Tec Voc high school with a welder’s certificate. He said he fully intended to take over the family’s hog operation.

“I was on my own, but the hog operation was fully automated,” he said.

After investing in some Winnipeg properties, including Winnipeg’s King’s Head Pub, he established Vomar Industries. Vouriot said he was always on the look-out for business opportunities and first offered sandblasting and painting service for bulk tank owners as well as reconditioning tire rims for automotive and farm machinery companies. He also rebuilt and resold vehicles.

“I call myself a business junkie,” he joked.

When Vomar began refurbishing propane cylinders for another company, Vouriot saw a new business opportunity and established Tank Traders in 2002. At that time, his was the only tank exchange program in Manitoba.

“There was such a program in the U.S. that a friend told me about.”

Starting slowly, he piloted the tank exchange program in La Salle then moved into the Winnipeg market. He partnered with hardware and grocery stores and gas stations to set up outdoor displays with 24 filled 20-pound cylinders in a metal cage. People wanting to get a cylinder would pay inside the store.

Vouriot said about 85 per cent of sales involve tank exchanges. “Once you’re in our program, you never have to buy another tank.”

Unlike other companies offering a similar service, Tank Traders does everything from filling new cylinders to using their own trucks to transport the cylinders to customers, picking up used cylinders and reconditioning them for reuse or stripping them down to recycle the steel and brass.

“Safeway was one of my first customers,” Vouriot said, adding through his contract with Safeway, he entered the Alberta market in 2005. In 2008 he was able to take over an Ontario tank exchange company’s customers.

“We are now the largest recycler of propane cylinders in the country,” he said, with approximately 200,000 passing through the company each year.

Reconditioning tanks keeps them out of the landfill. Each used tank is inspected, the valve is replaced and a sticker with the date is added, since a cylinder has a 10-year lifespan.

Any propane remaining in the tank is drawn out and added to the supply kept in bulk tanks on Vomar Industries’ site near the western edge of La Salle. Vouriot said propane isn’t a volatile gas and is heavier than air.

He’s able to purchase the majority of his propane from a transfer station located next to the intersection of the South Perimeter Highway and PTH 330 — about 10 kilometres from La Salle. Because the Canadian demand for propane peaks in the winter when it’s used for heating and grain drying, Vouriot said he’s able to negotiate on the price to some extent as Tank Traders’ busy season is in the warm months.

“Ninety per cent of our sales are in the summer. That’s our advantage.”

Tank Traders now has nine distribution and refurbishment centres across Canada with about 160 employees in the busy months and 100 in the off-season. Approximately 35 employees work at the La Salle headquarters.

As well as beginning to expand in the U.S. market, Vouriot also has his sights set on growing his business in other areas. He believes that the financial, logistical and administrative expertise that exists within his company can be turned to other business ventures that have the potential of becoming national enterprises.

“We’re very versatile – very lean,” he said.

As a marker of the company’s success and plans for continuing expansion, Vomar Industries will soon be moving into the new building being constructed on La Salle’s Main Street. The three-storey building will have retail tenants on the main floor, company headquarters on the second floor, and Vouriot’s living quarters on the top floor.

Asked why he decided to build the new headquarters in La Salle, Vouriot said, “La Salle is home.”

He added that he wants to help the community prosper.

For more information on Tank Traders, see https://tanktraders.com