Business View Magazine | December 2019

101 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2019 Nova Scotia Office: 19 Mills Drive Halifax, NS B3T 1P3 Phone: (902) 876-8001 Serving Canada, U.S. and the Caribbean www.totaltransport.ca Transportation Logistics • Rail Solutions • Barging/Shipping Solutions • Rigging • Project Management • Turn-Key Camp Relocations VESTA MODULAR grew that business from just a few people to, maybe, 20. It happened pretty quickly and over three or four years, we realized the industry needed somebody to actually take the modular product from a factory, deliver it to the site, set it up, install it, finish it, and hold the customer’s hand throughout that process. So, we decided to leave Champion and start VESTA. We founded the company in November, 2014, and we were initially backed by a small, private equity fund, which was made up of five high net-worth families that pooled their money together to invest in new businesses (Simon Group Holdings out of Birmingham, MI). We were their first investment and over the next three or four years, we grew that business from two guys to 60 employees and $60 million in revenue. “In November of 2018, Billy and I teamed up with a new private equity fund out of California called Balmoral Funds. We did a management buyout of our business from our original investors, and brought in new partners with the goal of continuing to grow the business on a larger scale. So, as we sit here today, it’s our five- year anniversary, and we’ve grown pretty quickly, and now we’re in a process of looking to grow quite a bit more in the next couple of years.” BVM: What are VESTA’s service offerings? McMurtrie: “Today, the company does two things; the first is we build permanent modular structures to customers who want to buy a structure – anything from a small office to a multi-story apartment building. We’ll act as general contractor on the whole project. The other big part is we own a fleet of about 3,000 buildings that we lease to customers across North America. Those buildings are predominantly temporary classrooms, temporary offices, medical facilities, disaster response, storage, energy, remote housing – all those things where a temporary solution is needed. So, we’re sort of like a Hertz rental car in that sense. We don’t have cars, we have buildings.”