Business View Magazine | September 2022

73 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 9 ELEMENT5 LP Element5 is Ontario’s only mass timber manufacturer and specializes in designing, fabricating, and assembling modern timber buildings. The company has its headquarters in Liberty Village, Toronto, Ontario and a separate manufacturing facility in St. Thomas, ON. Element5 supplies five types of mass timber products: CLT (Cross Laminated Timber), Glulam (Glued Laminated Timber), CLIPs (Cross- Laminated Insulated Panels), Boxx Panels, and NanoCLT. The company’s services span many timber construction areas, including cost consulting, design consulting, engineering, fabrication, and assembly. Although the firm has traditionally sold mass timber components, it is now moving towards standardized builds that integrate most finished parts of the structure. As Element5 VP of Market Strategy and Corporate Communications Patrick Chouinard explains, “When selling our CLIPs panels, we recognized a huge opportunity in the industry for a high-performance, prefabricated envelope panel. Previously, we delivered the panels to the site with the CLT interior layer only; cladding and windows were site-applied. We’re creating a fully unitized system where the panels arrive with the cladding and the windows and doors pre-installed for faster assembly.” Besides selling specialized timber products, the company is also developing affordable housing solutions with complete multi-unit structural designs that it can deliver as an off-the-shelf build. Element5 has rapidly grown over the last two years, from just 10 employees in 2021 to 85. The entry of investors is the leading cause of this growth, which has also seen the company move to a larger facility. “Last year, we moved to our new 137,000 square foot facility in St. Thomas,” says Chouinard. “We are also building another equally sized facility right next to the current one.” The St. Thomas facility is certified to the North American standards for CLT manufacturing and has been fully operational since April 2021.