Prelam Pivots To Hand Sanitizers To Make Up Revenue Drop On Odour Control Products
MONCTON – Sales may have dropped for Prelam Enterprises‘ traditional odour control products like Just’a Drop, but the company’s been busy making a line of hand sanitizers, soaps and disinfectants to serve Canadian and European markets.
“We’re developing a bunch of products to satisfy what’s going on because I think, for the next year at least, consumers will need to feel secure,” said co-founder Luc Jalbert. “We’re able to react [to the crisis], so we’re reacting in the best way.”
The E-Z Pur “on-the-go” all-natural hand soaps are set to hit Lawton’s across Atlantic Canada this week, as well as independent stores across Canada.
The line’s hand sanitizers, which relies on Benzalkonium Chloride instead of alcohol as the active ingredient, will hit production the same week. Those are offered in two sizes – 53 ml and 220 ml bottles.
“The sanitizer is probably going to go across Canada. We already got inquiries about it,” Jalbert said. “It’s going to be presented to all the national [retailers] that we deal with.”
Jalbert expects to ship more than 500,000 bottles of the hand sanitizers in the next few months.
“What we’ve noticed is everybody’s trying to do hand sanitizers, but they don’t have access to bottles,” he said. “I have almost 750,000 bottles in stock – different formats. I have a warehouse full of bottles here that we’ve been sitting on.”
The company is also working on mini surface sanitizers that people can bring when shopping and spray on cart handles, and a version for the home. A foaming antimicrobial soap for the home is in the works, too.
Prelam’s traditional products, including odour controllers Just’a Drop and LUKY8, are still in production, he said.
“We’re shipping every week. But the sales slowed down a little bit. It’s normal because people are shopping for necessities, but the hand sanitizers? Everybody’s been asking for sanitizers,” Jalbert said. “It’s been pretty hectic here.”
With the new products alone, Jalbert expects his staff to be busy for the next three months
“A category slowed down, but we amplified on another category we created,” he said.
The additional products aren’t the only things keeping Prelam busy. The company was also lucky because it “got busy at the moment it all started to shut down,” Jalbert said.
“Our retailers placed the usual orders so we were super busy at the beginning of the pandemic. We didn’t have to let go of nobody, actually everybody had to work harder,” he said.
Four additional people have been working at Prelam for the past three weeks and Jalbert could add two more to his team, he said.
“But we’re concerned right now because…our regular products are not necessity, so that’s why we’ve been worried about what’s going to happen in the next few weeks, next few months. We figured, let’s be innovative now,” he said.
Looking at its bottling lines and manufacturing capacity, as well as its access to China – the company imports and exports products there, Jalbert figured out ways to further diversify revenue streams.
He said while exports to China have stopped for now, he imported infrared thermometres that were sold to Service New Brunswick.
“We’re not selling right now in China. We’re importing but not exporting. What we’ve observed is that it’s a challenge to bring the stuff from China because everybody’s scrambling to get everything by air cargo. So there’s a huge delay that we’re facing so we’re being proactive by ordering now, and we know it’s going to take a lot longer to receive here but we’re planning ahead,” he said.
On the export side, Jalbert said the company has a contract in Germany for which Prelam will begin production for soon.
“There should be no issue exporting to Europe,” he said.
The company is also still offering co-packing services. Currently, Prelam helps co-pack Koffee Beauty’s scrubs, among other things.
“We still have some people inquiring, so that’s still ongoing and we’re open for business, so anybody who needs to fill anything right now, we have a couple bottling lines, and we have co-packing equipment so we can manufacture a lot of products for other clients if they need it,” he said. “But right now the key is to make our own products.”