After raising $5 million in seed money last year, Trusscore is building out its product line and employee team.
The latest move came June 30, when Palmerston, Ontario-based Trusscore bought the assets of Westech Building Products Inc. from Houston-based Westlake Chemical Corp.
Privately held Trusscore, a producer of PVC-based wall and ceiling panels, was in immediate need of machines and manpower, CEO Dave Caputo said in a phone interview. Sales increased about 77 percent in the last fiscal year and are growing at an even faster clip this year, he said.
"Our year ends in February, and we're up 125 percent this year so far," Caputo said. "We're bringing new lines on constantly. It's a match made in heaven to find all the infrastructure and most importantly the very experienced team that Westech had. The tenure there is incredible with many 10-, 15- and 20-year team members."
Trusscore bought all the extrusion lines, compounding assets, pulverizers, grinders and "everything you could imagine to be inside a 20- or 30-year-old extrusion plant," Caputo said. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Westech extrudes PVC profiles for windows, doors and other products, including a dock and deck system.
The Calgary location was a draw for Trusscore, which was looking for ways to deliver lower-cost products to its customers in western Canada and the U.S., Caputo said.
"We've got a really good product market fit with our wall and ceiling boards and our slat wall products," Caputo said. "Historically, a big chunk of our sales came from agriculture, but right now we're seeing probably half the leads coming into our inbox are from people organizing their garages. The residential market is really driving it. People are looking for something more durable and waterproof on their walls to really clean up their space."
Trusscore bills itself as a material science company that makes sustainable building products that install three times faster than traditional alternatives and have a crisp, durable finish. Applications include workshops, hospitality venues, restaurants and offices in addition to home garages and agricultural use like barns, indoor grow rooms and animal containment.
Westech products will complement and expand the Trusscore line and enhance the acquirer's focus on innovation and research and development, including advanced nanotechnology and chemistry, Caputo said.
"We will iterate on our formulation to make it the most sustainable it can be with features people really want," he added.
The Westech facility will be rebranded under the Trusscore banner, which also includes manufacturing operations in Dayton, Ohio, and Palmerston. The company's marketing and research and development staff work out of the Communitech technology and innovation hub in Kitchener, Ontario.
The acquisition brings the Trusscore workforce to 187 employees, up from 89 a year ago, to handle recently accelerated sales growth and market acceptance.
In May 2020, Trusscore had raised C$5.33 million (US$4.3 million) from investors for seed money for research and development aimed at scaling production of Trusscore's materials and hiring more people to support of the growth. The investors included fellow serial entrepreneurs, construction executives, family and friends, Caputo said at the time.
In September, Trusscore announced a partnership with HGTV home renovators Bryan and Sarah Baeumler, a husband-and-wife team featured on the channel for more than a decade in the Island of Bryan (in Canada) and Renovation Island (in the U.S.). The pair are brand ambassadors showcasing Trusscore's products to homeowners, contractors and, architects.
The sale of the Westech business comes just three weeks after Westlake bought the North American building products business of Boral Industries Inc. for $2.15 billion. The timing of the two transactions was coincidental and they are not related, Chip Swearingen, Westlake communications director, told Plastics News.