PRT Today
On September 1, 1998, PRT celebrates its 10th anniversary. Over the last 10 years, PRT has become the largest producer of container-grown seedlings in North America, an outstanding accomplishment for a group of ex-government employees who originally had almost no business experience. In a remarkably short period of time, PRT has gone from being a vision, to a sketch on a paper napkin, to a decentralized employee-owned company, to a unified, publicly traded corporation. Initially, one of the biggest challenges the company had was its decentralized structure. Most businesses start out in one location and then gradually expand, but PRT started with six completely different groups of people in six far-flung locations. Over time, however, the company has turned this aspect of their operation into an asset, one that has contributed a lot to their overall success. Because the company has nine regional operations, it can offer all the benefits of a local operation along with the experience and resources of a large forest nursery company. The nursery managers have learned to work together to ensure that each PRT nursery is full to capacity with high-quality seedlings.
Ev and Charlie congratulate each other on the success of the initial public offering of the PRT Forest Regeneration Income Fund.
The company has invested heavily in information systems to help facilitate communication between the nurseries. In 1988, each nursery had one PC and the staff had limited computer skills. Today, each site, depending on its size, has between three and 10 computers, and each nursery is networked through its own server. High speed connections link these servers and the network at the corporate office, an expensive system due to the remoteness of some of the sites. Each nursery manager also has access to a laptop computer that can dial into the corporate network to allow them to communicate with the nurseries and corporate office while they are out in the field. The network also allows Nursery Agrologist, Wayne Gates, to dial into any site to check growth progression through each nursery's cultural history record. As well, computers are used in the greenhouses to monitor and control the seedling growing environment.
From left to right: Mary Ruhl, Chris Worthy, Bill Dickson (Lawson Lundell Lawson & McIntosh), Ev Van Eerden, Charlie Johnson and Dan Davies at a celebratory lunch.
Since 1993, the company has become increasingly focused on its core forest seedling nursery business. By the time PRT went public in 1997, close to $35 million had been invested into increasing the company's capabilities. Through acquisition and expansion, PRT's total greenhouse capacity has grown to over 1.8 million square feet. As a result, the company now grows over 99 percent of its seedlings in styroblock containers with all remaining bareroot production being moved to PRT Campbell River.
Bareroot field at PRT Campbell River.
Early on, PRT recognized that as part of the company's overall dedication to customer service, they needed to work more closely with customers in the field. A position was created that was exclusively devoted to providing customers with up-to-date information, through cooperative field trials, technical reports and equipment assessments, to improve plantation performance. Steven Kiiskila, who had worked at several PRT nurseries before returning to school to complete a Master's Degree in forest biology, became PRT's Field Agrologist in 1996.
The company's vast size and the accumulated knowledge and experience of all its managers and staff, has enabled PRT to make many significant contributions to plantation establishment in Canada. Nursery managers, with the help of PRT's agrologists, Wayne Gates and Steven Kiiskila, continuously conduct a variety of seedling trials in response to unique customer requests. Nutri-plugTM and BrushbusterTM seedlings are two of the products PRT has helped to develop. Through improved growing techniques, PRT nurseries have contributed to the development of a summer planting program on Vancouver Island and to the production of early sow crops for summer delivery in the interior. PRT staff regularly make site visits to help foresters select appropriate stock types for planting or to analyze post-planting growth problems.
Nutri-plugTM seedling at FAP trial near Houston, B.C. in September 1997.
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 PRT is a leader in capitalizing on the opportunities presented by the reforestation industry. We began by acquiring six nurseries from the B.C. government in 1988. Since then we have expanded the original facilities, we have built a new nursery, and we have grown through acquisitions.
Ev Van Eerden
(PRT Forest Regeneration
Income Fund video, June 1997)
When we came out of government, 97 to 98% of our revenues were still tied to government through the government contract and only 2 or 3% outside. Today it's less than 5% from government, so it's a total reverse over 10 years. We have not sought government dollars or assistance. It has been part of our strategy to go away from it, into the private sector.
Chris Worthy
Vice-Chairman,
PRT Management Inc.
and a Director of PRT
I think that PRT is a privatization success story. That a group of public sector people were able to move effectively into the private sector and be successful. There were a lot of guys that were motivated to succeed, were willing to share their skills not only at their nurseries at the local level, but within the company, to ensure that PRT grew and was successful. It's just an absolute success story. I think that there are other privatization examples in the world where they've been total failures. That was one of my concerns when I came in with PRT -- that this thing might not work. And everyone has those sorts of reservations. So it's been very satisfying for me to have seen the company move forward, increase dramatically in size with our client base and with revenue, and be so well poised for additional expansion into the future.
Glenn Goodwill
Manager, PRT Beaverlodge
It's hard to believe 10 years have gone by with PRT. Feels like last week that I was listening to Charlie tell me how he was going to buy six government nurseries and make it fly. It was the late spring of '88 and we were on a field trip in Terrace. He was the Silviculture Branch Director at the time and knew of the privatization probability. He was very upset and determined to make it happen. I was in awe of his vision and loyalty to the nursery employees. Thanks Charlie and to all the others who put so much on the line for PRT.
Stewart Haywood-Farmer
Superintendent, PRT Vernon
As a Director of Pacific Regeneration Employees Holding Inc. and more recently, PRT Management Inc., I have had the great good fortune to work closely with the other directors and the senior management team of PRT. It is hard to imagine a more dedicated and inspiring group of people with whom to work. I know this team is supported by committed employees, who are the foundation of the company's success.
When I look back on the years that I have been a Director, I am amazed at the company's rapid transformation. What is more remarkable is that throughout that transformation, the atmosphere of the company has remained unchanged. Whether it is at the nurseries, the lab or corporate office, an atmosphere of collegiality, a sense of family, prevails. This collegiality sets PRT apart, and makes it an absolute pleasure to be associated with the company.
Congratulations to Charlie on his retirement, and on the important role he has played in building a company well-positioned for continued growth and success.
Mary Ruhl
Director, PRT Management Inc.
Our motto and our objective was to be seen as local. A local producer, a local supplier, and at the same time, have a network with a number of locations. But it is very, very difficult to manage that kind of company with spread out profit and business centres. You have to have really good information systems -- that's where Brett comes in -- good business systems -- that's where people like Chris and John Kitchen come in -- and someone who has specialized knowledge of plants -- like Wayne Gates. I think that if you look at it now, we are a very well run company. I'm proud of it. All PRT employees can and should take pride in that. We've hosted people who came visiting for the public offering or others representing large companies, who came to look at Campbell River and the other nurseries -- and they've always been extremely complimentary on how we run our business. Which I think is very satisfying for a group of mostly ex-government employees. But that was our real challenge, not only to keep it together, but to run it well, so we'd survive and be successful. We're sort of the big boys on the block now, but we worked for it.
Ev Van Eerden
Let us always remember that tree seedlings are plants too. These little guys have great drought and stress tolerance as they mature. However, if they have to fall back on those resources when they are under our care, we will not have maximized their genetic potential in the nursery and will, most likely, not meet our customers' expectations.
Wayne Gates
Nursery Agrologist
(ImPrints, Vol. VIII No. 1, March 1997)
The managers had to learn to bring business each other's way, for the good of the whole company, rather than competing with each other. And that was tough, to learn to work as a team for the common good. Last year, between them, they transferred millions of dollars worth of orders. Had we been one location, we wouldn't have gotten most of those orders. That's a credit to our managers for working as a group for PRT.
Ev Van Eerden
President, PRT and
PRT Management Inc.
I think it's interesting from the point of view of community. In our culture today we lack a sense of community. So some people find community in the workplace and that's what PRT staff clearly enjoy.
Audrey Van Eerden |