With rising energy costs putting increasingly larger dents in homeowners’ wallets, more and more people are turning to Northern Ontario companies like Innotech Developments International for their home heating solutions.
Located in Thunder Bay, Innotech markets and manufactures two unique lines and four sizes of outdoor wood furnaces, which are sold in more than 90 dealer stores across Canada and the U.S.
The company’s sales have soared in recent years, with an annual increase of 50 to 100 per cent. This year alone, Innotech is expected to produce approximately 1,000 stoves.
“The industry is definitely changing from the viewpoint of its growth,” says Brian Bell, president of Innotech. “Our sales are directly relative to the cost of energy. People want something more cost-effective and efficient.”
Bell credits the soaring cost of energy with significantly boosting his company’s sales and estimates that with electricity costs totaling up to nearly four times the cost of using an outdoor furnace – 87.3 cents versus 19.8 cents an hour for 27,000 BTU – growth will only continue in the coming years.
As the president of Industrial Chrome and Machine Ltd., Bell’s connection to Innotech began when he saw that the market for hard-chrome plating and the company’s other related services was waning in 2002. In an effort to branch out to growing industries, he purchased Innotech that same year and combined its previous purpose as a marketer of outdoor furnaces with the capacity to manufacture them, employing nearly 25 people in the process.
Noting that many outdoor furnaces are essentially similar, Bell points out that Innotech’s products differ in slight but significant ways. For example, most outdoor furnace manufacturers currently use Type 304 stainless steel, while Innotech uses Type 409, which Bell feels has a superior cost savings and a relatively similar protection against heat-stress cracking.
What’s more, Bell prides himself on the simplicity of his outdoor stoves, which feature a minimum of moving parts and a maximal ease of operation.
“A lot of our competitors have digital and automatic gauges and whatnot, but that’s just something else to have a problem with,” he says. “Others have an augur, which is great until you burn a pallette that has nails in it, and you have to take the furnace apart to get the nails out. We prefer to keep it simple.”
While the desire for cheaper heating solutions remains high throughout urban and rural areas alike, Innotech’s focus remains largely on smaller markets due to legislative issues that prevent the use of outdoor furnaces and their resulting “nuisance” smoke in mid- to large-sized communities.
In order to expand his potential market, Bell plans to invest additional resources into research and design in the hopes of enabling stoves to burn more cleanly. This will allow his products to meet increasingly tightening industry regulations and possibly convince larger communities to allow their use.
Earlier this year, the Vermillion Bay-based Jamestown Pellet Stoves joined Innotech as a division of Industrial Chrome when Bell was approached by the previous owner. This most recent acquisition focuses solely on the production of indoor stoves, using pelletized wood chips rather than standard full or partial logs used in conventional wood stoves.
Production of the indoor stoves has yet to begin, and 10 to 15 people are slated to be hired at Jamestown Pellet Stoves once sufficient materials have been ordered for manufacture.
Bell is optimistic about the future of his newest company, although he acknowledges that pellet stoves are subject to different roadblocks than outdoor stoves, such as the availability of pellets. As the bulk of pellets can affect freight costs, the construction of an increased number of pellet plants will likely prove crucial to how widespread the use of this type of stove will be.
“The market for a pellet plant in Northern Alberta is not going to be the Northeastern States, because of the freight,” he says.
“There has to be plants in various areas in order to make this viable. It’s probably going to take a couple of years for the supply of the pellets to meet the market’s demands.”
While pellets currently require sawdust and wood products obtained from paper mills and sawmills, Bell is expecting this to change as the industry’s growth spurs further research into alternative sources.
“Over the next couple of years, a lot of things are going to change and unfold,” he says. “It’s a very active industry right now and there are a lot of changes that are going to come in the near future.”
