Whether it's here at home, or around the world, Friesens Corporation is constantly looking for ways to bring new technological innovations to the Altona based printer and book manufacturer.
"One of the real challenges of being in our business, is it's a very capital intensive business," explained Byron Loeppky, President, during the latest episode of Industry Leaders of the Pembina Valley. "It requires very expensive equipment, and if you fall behind, it's very difficult to catch up."
With that in mind, constantly reinvesting into the company has been somewhat of a mantra at Friesens for years, going all the way back to the Friesen family which started the company.
"In order to keep the company strong, in order to keep our staff employment safe, one of the ways we do that is to constantly reinvest in our business," explained Loeppky. "That has been a big part of our philosophy, and we've continued through good times and more difficult times."
That reinvestment takes Loeppky around the world to investigate equipment and processes that can keep Friesens on the leading edge of its industry.
"Almost all of our equipment will come from overseas, often Europe, and sometimes Israel and beyond," he shared. "When we look at equipment, we're typically going on factory tours and factory investigations in order to find the right technology that's going to fit us."
Loeppky says, in addition to more automation like robots, co-bots and self driving vehicles, new printing technology is also being looked at right now.
"More imminently, I would say we're looking at different printing technology that will allow us to do things differently than we do today," he said. "Today we print conventionally offset, what has been kind of the staple in the industry for many years. There's a number of different digital solutions that can be offered, and there's a new company running something called nanotechnology."
To find out what nanotechnology may look like within a printing context, listen to the conversation with Byron Loeppky below.