Pro Metal Industries Ltd.’s Post

Transcript

This company came along, it was called Capless Parash and they were going to do a potash mine near the town of Bethune. And at the time we had no. Economic development. The lady that helped at the time, her name was Lisa Seer and she created PFN Group of Companies in 2012. And our first process was to engage industry, create memo MO, use partnerships, but we didn't own it. And so K Plus began building their Pashman of $4 billion potash mine. But when the project was over, all those partnerships we made terminated. So then we're back to square one with no real economic venture. That said, we own that. So we set out to look for our own company and lo and behold, we we end up purchasing our pro metal industries in 2015. We've had our growing pains. You know, like any other company, we had our struggles to try and break into industry. Where can we go? How can we continue on an annual basis? Depend on on a certain sector. So when we did that research, we came up with, uh, with defense. OO metal had a lot of definitely long term career opportunities being metal fabrication company. So a lot of lot in the trade, so machining, welding, sheet metal workers and and recently powder coating. And then in addition to that really the other support staff in terms of drafting and engineering. Sales, finance, accounting, so a lot of great career opportunities that are they're trying to create for their band and that really drove me what really what their purpose of pro metal was. It was this long term vision that chief and council had for pro metal. So when I joined the team in May of 2020, it was a small team. It was Mark. We had one salesman, we had an accountant, we had a someone that worked in purchasing and did accounting and then we had some staff in the back. I think there were a total of 12 staff. When I first started and RO Metal was just one of the companies that I support in my role at EFN Group and it was very small, small team at the time. And you know, with, with Mark joining the team, I was able to bring my marketing background and experience and help to just rebrand PFN Group and Pro Metal. And, and let the world know, let Regina and Saskatchewan know that pro metal is here. We're open for business, we're 100% Indigenous owned and. We started to see growth and interest in pro metal. Well, like I said, we we've have better response time with our customers and that was that was our priority. We've invested in the building. We took the risk to putting the money into it in order to be more competitive with industry out there. Of course, we do a lot of work with Department of National Defense in our military work, and so we had to be. Better precision, better quality of work, better turn around on everything we do to meet some of the contracts of National Defense here at Pearl Metal. We don't want it to be just manufacturing for the defense and aerospace industry. We don't want to just be manufacturing for the mines. We're always looking at expanding each of those portfolios. And then in the potash mine industry here in Saskatchewan, huge opportunities. BHP's just building the world's largest potash mine. And then with Nutrient K plus some Mosaic, we have a lot of great relationships there that we I feel we're just at the tip of basically our work that we're able to get and the service we're able to provide to those industries. We had that ceremony, you know, to pray for success, to pray for good health for the workers, and you know, all of that for moving forward with our business, you know, and and and we take pride in that ownership of pro metal and moving forward and and to be able to introduce that to our non-native staff members as well, to show them what past a little bit about what past was about. As they nation and like with Chief at the helm and our fellow councillors. And the assistance that we got from Pro Metal, it's amazing how we were able to come together, you know, and to me, it wasn't about. One for the against the other. We were all in it together. Well, I think that. Pro Metal has provided our people our password First Nation with many benefits like our young people training and getting jobs. There's so many benefits from it and and our people also have shares in the company. Just reserve will always begin refer having elders there. So they keep that nice balance. They're the spirituality and the physical part of everything. Which is important. We pray for the prosperity and and you know, we have good leadership that they're leading the way and paving the way for, you know, the the up and coming young people, a lot of employment and everything like that, you know, and that's what we need, you know, and training and everything that you know has it is we have lot of training of all kinds on the reserve now, you know, and that. Our CEO, Richard Missense, he eloquently explains the benefits of economic to a First Nation. That is not an individual benefit, it's a whole people benefit. We look at creating wealth for the nation and it's supposed to other corporations. We create public wealth as opposed to private wealth. And so that means all of the net proceeds of the business go back to the nation, and the nation uses that for elders programming, use programs, education, housing, health, elder care, youth care, educational care, housing, infrastructure, those kind of things. And the other thing we get to do is we get to create jobs here and we can train and develop our citizens to work in the trades. And specifically with full metal, that would be welding, machining, sheet, sheet metal work and we also have administrative jobs as well. So during COVID, you know, marked through his just creative, creative mind came up with, you know, we had to look at basically new revenue sources and we deployed over 75 portable hospitals that offered a negative pressure isolation. Just when we thought we were through it, another wave and another wave hit. So we we saw there was a need for long term isolation in terms of the 14 day isolation. So we actually. Provided what we call our domes to provide isolation. So it was rapidly deployable. We can set up the domes in three days and through our innovation and through somewhere innovation partners, we're able to come up with that solution. So when we got all our supplies and I asked Health Canada, it was over $2,000,000 and it wasn't for past one, it was for all the First Nation in Saskatchewan. And finally, Health Canada agreed to pay for it. And we brought in a cargo air aircraft, brought in all the supplies and the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations picked it up and distributed to all the 74 First Nations. So that's how the 74 First Nations and Saskatchewan got their masks and gloves and gowns was some of the work we did at Task Force Nation in conjunction with Full Metal Industries. In 2021 we started the feather project. It was when the unmarked graves were first being discovered, first in BC and Kamloops. So we as pro metal and our team, we really want to do something to help with the healing and to give back. So we had a lot of people on our network reaching out. So we said, hey, internally, what do we do? Well, we make metal products. Let's, let's come up with a feather. The first year we raised over $100,000 that we gave back to. Post secondary Indigenous students. And so over the last three years we we've raised over $300, 000 that we gave back to Indigenous students that are going to post secondary so. I'm, I think I'm just proud of the growth, right? The growth of, you know, a small business to moving into this nice, big, beautiful building that we're in now. I'm proud that we're 100% First Nation owned. As a First Nation woman, I think it's really inspiring and motivating to see. And I just say, yeah, the future is bright. And again, we're very, we're very entrepreneurial here at Pro Metal and we're very intentional on what we do. And I don't think there's any way we can not succeed or even exceed our expectations of what we want to achieve. There was doors open for us that weren't there previously. So I think having a national brand and national recognition, especially in DND, that's something to be proud of. Yeah. And that's what's so unique about economics for Indigenous people. There's no one individual. They were working to see how we could all benefit together. Let's move forward together. Not I'm gonna move forward. It's we will all move together.