A Japanese Modular Builder Opened Its First Canadian Plant On Maple Avenue

The industrial building at 955 Maple Ave. is now the Canadian home of a Japanese construction company. SEKISUI Canada Modular Solutions started operating there last week, its first location in the country and its manufacturing and operations hub for Canada.

The company is a subsidiary of SEKISUI Chemical and builds steel-frame modular buildings for housing, schools, institutional projects and commercial work. Up to 90 per cent of a building goes together inside the factory before the modules are trucked to the site and assembled, which shortens project timelines and keeps quality control in one place. The method comes out of 50 years of modular building in Japan.

How Burlington landed it

City representatives and Discover Burlington, formerly Burlington Economic Development and Tourism, met the company during a business delegation to Itabashi, Burlington's twin city in Japan. Claire Green, Discover Burlington's director of destination development and marketing, said there have been several meetings with Japanese businesses, though she could not confirm whether SEKISUI is the first one to open here off the back of those trips.

Feryal Gheidar, operations manager for the Burlington site, said the plant has seven employees and the company plans to recruit locally as the business grows. She said Burlington won out on its location, its business community, the skilled talent pool and the connection to the wider GTA. The property is leased and needed almost nothing done to it, in part because the building already had the crane the operation requires.

There is nothing finished to look at yet. Gheidar said no Canadian SEKISUI projects have been completed so far, and the company expects to have buildings to show before long.