How New Brunswick’s Corruven is Exporting its Vision of Sustainable Innovation
A company in Northern New Brunswick is making the world more sustainable through its value-added wood products it exports across the globe.
Edmundston-based Corruven manufactures high-performance composites, which includes its patented Corruven technology that optimizes the natural strength of wood. This technology is used in the company’s packaging, architecture, construction and furniture products.
“Corruven is all about building game-changing innovation to build a better world. That’s our vision. That’s why we get up in the morning. How we do that and how we bring that to life is we work with our customers to develop solutions. We don’t just develop components, we like to look at the global solution and develop the most effective way to achieve their objectives,” says Corruven COO Daniel Beauregard-Long.
“Whether you’re talking about how to make better packaging, whether you’re talking about how you can make a better night of sleep for consumers, we look at this from a very holistic approach and then we complete that.”
The company’s corrugated technology impregnates reject-veneer with resin to reinforce the strength of the fibre.
“When you think about it, wood is made of a multitude of fibres and those fibres are very strong in their tensile strength, but they’re weak in the other axis,” says Beauregard-Long. “What we do is we impregnate the fibre to reinforce the material and then we put overlays on top of it. So now we have a composite solution and the big thing about Corruven is we want to use materials in a smarter way. We do that by using very little material and we’re giving it a shape basically to give it the very best strength-to-weight performance.”
This makes Corruven products sustainable on a couple different levels.
“It means the sustainability in terms of the environment. It also means sustainability in terms of business models. It’s a big theme of the values that we have at Corruven,” says Beauregard-Long.”We work with FSC in terms of sourcing the wood. We work with recycled fibre. We work a lot also in terms of some of better resin solutions that have no formaldehyde … Choosing the right materials and the right partners to get those materials is a big thing at Corruven.”
The company currently has 20 employees working out of its 100,000 square-foot facility in Saint-Basile, which was former Zellers location. The facility features a corrugating line and two presses
for their sandwich panel products. They also have an “innovation kitchen” named after the fact that it’s located in where the Zellers restaurant used to be.
The company has four divisions: architectural products, building materials, packaging and bed platforms. About 50 per cent of the Corruven’s business is in the United States, with their key markets being Ohio, Michigan, Toronto and Montreal. Some of their products are also shipped to Utah, Georgia and Switzerland.
Corruven recently received the Innovative Exporter of the Year award at the New Brunswick Export Awards. Beauregard-Long says the company has a “push and pull” approach when it comes to marketing their products to customers.
“If I take packaging, for example, we’ll approach different clients that we think are a great fit for our products. Where we can help them make better packaging solutions, reduce their damage rate, get their products safely to market or just add more sustainable materials as a packaging option. We do that on the push side,” he says.
“Then on the pull side, we’ll work with companies like Target, Walmart and Amazon, because they’ve put out some pretty ambitious goals in terms of sustainable packaging for the next three to five years, basically to get rid of foam from their supply chains. So we work with [the companies and their suppliers] to try to get there in terms of revamping those supply chains. We also do the same in all our other divisions.”
Beauregard-Long says another key to Corruven’s success is its ability to form the right partnerships and to recognize its strengths and weakness.
“We know we have a lot of strength on the technology side. We know that part very well,” he says. “Our company is like a technology platform, we can sell in multiple markets, probably too many for our own good. But what we do is we go into certain markets when we have the right partners. We bring the technology expertise and our partner brings the market expertise. When we combine that two, that’s when we know we’re successful.”
When it comes to exporting your product out of your region, Beauregard-Long’s one piece of advice to companies is to go to your clients directly and truly understand their needs and where your product or service can help.
“You can’t expect to build your sales or organization by sitting at your desk at your company in New Brunswick. You need to be there with your clients, seeing them win, seeing what their pains are, what their ambitions are, and that’s where you’re able to build those relationships,” he says. “Everyone has a product to sell, but those relationships and how you can help them get towards their goals, that’s how you win. That’s how you get ahead.”