CPIA honors extruded vinyl building products pioneers

Two businessmen heading major extruded vinyl building products companies were honored at the June 15 awards gala put on by the Canadian Plastics Industry Association.

Jim Ellies, president and chief operating officer of Gracious Living Innovations Inc., garnered the Leader of the Year Award in recognition of his 35 years in Canada's plastics industry, where he fostered industry competitiveness, innovation and environmental stewardship. Vic De Zen, chairman of Vision Extrusions Group, earned a Lifetime Achievement Award for helping make vinyl profiles an important ingredient in modern construction.

Both men are based in Woodbridge, Ontario. Ellies' company extrudes foamed vinyl as a wood replacement in spas and windows and in various industrial applications. De Zen's firm is a major in window and door profiles.

“I started out as a banker in venture capital markets,” Ellies recalled in a phone interview. “One of my accounts supplied parts to the Big 3 auto companies.”

Ellis joined PGTI Plastics of Whitby, Ontario, and began learning about extrusion, molding, plating and painting in the 1980s. He next joined Bolton, Ontario-based Crila Plastics Industries Ltd., which became an extrusion specialist that helped pioneer foamed PVC plastic lumber in the mid-1990s. Through merger with other plastics companies, Crila became part of CPI Group.

The 2008 recession hit CPI hard. The group reorganized and in 2009 it was acquired by Gracious Living Corp., a large housewares injection molder that had been owned for several years by De Zen's company, Royal Group Technologies Ltd.

Gracious Living Innovations has grown to a 66-extruder operation, the largest foam extrusion house in Canada. The firm's 200 or so employees work around the clock churning out Eon brand decking and other durable, complex extrusion products.

“We are in a high-value, engineered products industry,” Ellies said.

Vinyl building products empire

De Zen's award bolsters his already lengthy list of honors that includes the Order of Canada, Entrepreneur of the Year, Canada's Innovation Award, and Canada's plastics Man of the Year Award. Through his 45-plus years in plastics, De Zen created an empire based on vinyl building products and was a major figure in Toronto business circles and the Woodbridge community.

De Zen in 1970 founded the profile extrusion company that became Royal. He built the company into a $2 billion enterprise with arms in vinyl building products, vinyl resin production, compounding and other technologies, along with transportation and logistics. He invented a modular vinyl/concrete building system that was hurricane-proof but too expensive for many construction projects. The system was, however, well suited to the St. Kitts Marriott Resort and the Royal Beach Casino, constructed in the West Indies by De Zen and partners. After the resort opened in 2003, one of its early prominent guests was former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

De Zen turned Royal into a public company in 1994, but clouds soon began to gather over his empire. By the early 2000s, Royal's financial performance began to sag and an investigation was launched to look into business dealings between Royal and the new resort and casino. Investigations spread into other areas close to De Zen.

Some of the allegations expanded into fraud lawsuits against De Zen and various colleagues. During a 49-day trial in 2010, lawyers presented hundreds of documents covering byzantine business dealings with multiple parties.

De Zen and co-defendants were exonerated and an appeal of the verdict in 2011 was quashed.

Early in the turmoil, De Zen was pushed out of Royal and the company was subsequently sold to vinyl resins producer Georgia Gulf Corp. in 2006.

De Zen then started another business empire that includes vinyl profile manufacturer Vision Extrusions, door and window operations, a transport company, real estate holdings and an industrial contractor. The new conglomerate, ZZen Group, is in the same neighborhood as the former Royal factories.

Other winners

Other winners in the CPIA awards include:

• In the Lifetime Achievement category, Judith Nancekivell, former publisher of Canadian Plastics.

• In the Plastics Innovator category: Rob Miller, president of equipment supplier Wittmann Canada Inc.; Terry Rochfort, director of technical services for caps and closures molder Bericap North America Inc., and custom injection molder Protoplast Inc.

• For Plastics Sustainability, Cascades Inc.

• Steven Wood, president and CEO of extrusion coater Vintex Inc., and Veso Sobot, director of corporate affairs for pipe extruder Ipex Management Inc., received the CanPlast Award.