Business View Magazine | January 2021

46 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JANUARY 2021 to invest with us. Then Frank introduced me to Tom Kennedy, Managing Director of Kensington Capital Partners (one of Canada’s largest venture capital firms), who also became an investor. Together, Frank and Tom own shares in two large sawmills in northern Ontario, so our relationship runs right from the forest timber to finished product. And thanks to Tom, we have access to the necessary capital to fund expansion and growth.” Mass timber is being used in everything from single family homes and cottages, to very large multi-unit residential complexes and office buildings of five stories and even higher. The Element5 pipeline is full of those opportunities. The sweet spot tends to be the larger projects but they also get some “really cool” small commercial buildings and very interesting single-family homes and contemporary-style cottages. Chouinard explains, “Our industry is evolving. A limited number of architects, engineers, owners, of a small CLT (cross laminated timber) manufacturing company in Ripon, Quebec, an hour east of Ottawa, Ontario, and took over the lease on the building. “So, in just 18 months, Element5 had become the third largest CLT manufacturer in the North American marketplace, at that time,” says Chouinard. “In comparison to Structurlam and Nordic, the two giants in the mass timber industry, we were just a blip on the radar, but that got us into the industry. We won some projects, started to build our team, and earned a good reputation.” The Ripon plant has now been operating for over three years and is continuing to expand. But Chouinard always had his sights set on the Ontario-based market. Two years ago, he met with Frank Dottori, who is highly respected in the forest industry, and founder of a company called Tembec – which he turned from a single sawmill in receivership into 48 operations around the world. Chouinard recalls, “I knew he was interested in the mass timber movement and had done some research, so I invited him