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Texel, a Division of ADS Inc.
St-Elzear, Quebec
http://www.texel.ca
Needled non-woven fabrics, felts
Primary markets: America, Asia, Europe
Number of employees: 300+
Guy Drouin C.A, president
Guy.drouin@texel.ca

Texel achieves material success

Business experts say that among the best ways of ensuring enduring success, is to target niche areas in lower tier supply chains, with value-added products, preferably those that don’t attract too much public attention or competitors. Texel does all that. “We produce specialized fabrics used in industrial applications,” says Guy Drouin, the company’s president. “It’s a complicated business. I often have to explain several times to get people to understand it.”

The advent of lighter, stronger, inexpensive materials of the kind Texel produces, has spurred tremendous innovation in manufactured products. That’s particularly true in the automotive, road construction and medical, sectors, which Texel supplies with a range of non-woven and coated fabrics. Clients include corporations such as 3M, Johnson & Johnson, BASF and BMW.

It’s a capital intensive business. Texel recently invested $16 million to purchase equipment and expand its Sainte-Marie facility, where it now produces parts for the automotive sector, notably wheel linings and the felt interiors of trunks and rooves. The plant also produces a line of geo-synthetic products used to stabilize terrain in applications such as road construction.

Texel invests heavily in research and development at its in-house laboratory, where it maintains mini-pilot manufacturing and finishing lines that enable its experts to create and test fabrics from various fiber, resin and coating combinations. Douin, who trained as a chartered accountant, not surprisingly maintains a rigorous approach to planning and oversight, and regularly monitors real time data to track progress. “We want to grow even more during coming years,” says the seasoned veteran. “We’ve got some big investments planned.”

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Peter Diekmeyer Communications Inc.