An odd love affair – with concrete

Sherbrooke anglo up for business award

Call it a love affair with concrete. Zachary Gillman moulded his brainchild, Interstar, from a concrete pigment distributor in Montreal with a handful of employees into the only Canadian company that manufactures and distributes a complete range of its own line of concrete pigments, admixtures, fibers, sealants, and automated pigment dispensers to markets across North and South America and the United Kingdom.

Interstar now broasts eight offices across North America and 90 employees – 65 of whom work out of iths three-year-old corporate headquaters on Portland Boulevard in Sherbrooke – and Gillman has been rewarded for his business savvy and vision by being name a Quebec finalist for Ernest & Young 2006 Entrepreneur of the Year award.

The Entrepreneur Of The Year award honour businesspeople who have demonstrated entrepreneurial success and personal commitment to their communities.

“The wealth of great visionaries in Quebec continues to build our Quebec and Canadian economies, and in many cases grow the global marketplace as well,” says François Dufresne, director of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year program in Quebec and partner at Ernst & Young .

“We’re proud to recognize the exceptional contributions of these committed individuals to our communities.”

Gillman as born in Sherbrooke and moved to New Brunswick after high school to study to become a commercial pilot. After a couple of years of flying a corporate jet for the provincial government, Gillman – whose father was in the concrete industry – returned to his native Quebec to study geology at Concordia University and earn a business management certificate at McGill at night.

“I saw the need for the kinds of products we manufacture”, Gillman explains simply, adding that the focus of the company has always been customized products developed with the manufacturers and – increasingly, as the concrete industry becomes more sophisticated and aesthetic-minded – the architects, designers, and decorators who turn to Interstar.

In 1989 Gillman moved the company to St-Élie d’Orford and kick started the transition from distributor to a vertically integrated outfit. In 1997 Interstar began marketing its own line of pigments and admixtures exclusively.

Since then Interstar has spawned a pharmaceutical research branch and growth by 20 per cent per year across the board, from sales and profits to its workforce and physical space.

In 1998 the company opened on office and warehouse in Toronto and launched operation in Mexico under the name Interox. In 1999, operations expanded into Syracuse, NY, and Calgary. Throughout the past few years, that growth pattern continued, culminating in the construction of the Portland Boulevard facility in Sherbrooke in 2003 and its 30,000-square-foot expansion this year.

Interstar’s president matches his entrepreneurial prowess with a devotion to environmental stewardship.

The Sherbrooke plant is a zero-discharge facility, which means no manufacturing by-products are released into the atmosphere: dust is collected by a state-of-the-art filtration system: heat producedin the manufacturing facility is used as a primary heat source in winter; and all waste water is purified and re-used.

Gillman won a Business Development Bank of Canada award in 1999. In 2002, the Eastern Townships Chamber of Commerce bestowed upon Interstar its small business manufacturer of the years award, and last year the company was the recipient of the Government of Canada Export’s Award in Research and Development.

The entrepreneur attributes his success to an emphasis on research and development at all levels of the company’s organization.

Gillman will discovery if that approach earns him another notch in his belt when the provincial Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2006 awards are handed out Oct. 26.

The provincial winners go on to the Canadian finals Nov. 2. The national prizewinner will then compete against counterparts from 35 countries for the title of International Entrepreneur of the Year, to be announced in June 2007.

Monday, July 31, 2006 page 5
The Record, Sherbrooke
Joshua Bleser