Servicing clients in 35 different nations, Samco Machinery Ltd., an ISO 9001-certified business, offers complete turnkey roll forming systems, including uncoilers, coil cars, flatteners, roll form dies, roll formers, presses, and material handling solutions.
Since 1972, Samco has been a top producer of roll forming and material handling equipment for sectors including automotive, metal building and construction, transportation, storage, energy, and consumer goods. Specializing in creative, personalized solutions based on standard modules, Samco works with each client to understand their requirements and create engineered-to-order solutions tailored to their specifications and financial constraints.
A well-rounded organization
Operating for more than 50 years, Samco’s previously formed rolling division and fabrication division allowed the company to become fully vertically integrated about five years ago.
“When we talk about vertical integration, we talk about the complete roundedness of an organization, and it comes down to our ability to address customer needs,” says Darryl P. Levesque, Vice President of the Rolling Division & Fabrication Division. “There’s always been a strong focus—and there always will be—on customer-centricity and recognizing the customers’ needs.”
While Samco is based on building machinery and satisfying customers looking for equipment to run their product at speed and volume, a division of the company also specializes in assisting companies whose needs are more modest, who might not have a lot of volume and floor space yet, or perhaps a startup without the working capital to invest in machinery running only 20 to 30 percent of the time.
“That’s where the rolling division came in, to satisfy those customers who didn’t need a roll-form piece of equipment; they simply needed a roll-form product,” Levesque explains. “A lot of these companies also weren’t interested in producing product in-house. They were looking for contract manufacturing, somebody that would do the work for them.” Now, Samco does an excellent job of satisfying that small part of the market, producing its own machines in-house with the expectation of “if you build it, they will come.”
“I’ve been with Samco 11 years, and my job was to look for those opportunities and seek out those individual units that required that type of service,” explains Levesque. “This type of service looked at companies that weren’t doing roll forming for their specific product, but it became a bit cost-prohibitive because it was higher volume—not high enough to dictate a machine, but high enough not to pay a premium price to have these things formed when they had more than one vendor.”
Samco can save clients money by producing the volume needed without the client’s having to invest in all the machinery and specialized labour required. “We sought it out. We started growing the business and found those customers that really needed that type of service.”
Rolling out the rolling division
Those customers, operating in many different markets, were served from within the rolling division, and include a company in Florida that came to Samco 10 years ago as a startup looking for a specialized gutter guard service product.
“They’re a fantastic company that approached us in Miami at one of the trade show events and told us, ‘Nobody wants to touch us. They say it can’t be done.’ We looked at it and said, ‘We can do it.’ We started working with them, and after six months of development, we produced product for them, and now they’re growing,” says Levesque.
Then there are the parts for dock modelling systems that Samco produces for industrial-size door manufacturers whose products go to waste bin companies, trailer companies, and sawmill companies. In short, customer service for diverse companies is a top priority.
“It’s huge—the customer is everything,” Levesque stresses. “You’ve got to put yourself in their shoes. They’re not familiar with the process or the technology, so through our ability and knowledge of what can and can’t be done, we have to educate them about what we’re capable of.”
Depending on the project’s complexity, it can be a long process—up to six months in the case of the gutter guards—from development to production of tooling, which is done in-house. “That’s one of the benefits we have with design staff in-house,” says Levesque. “We design our own roll tooling in a way that meets our current process standards and, at the end of the day, produces the product that they’re looking for.”
President and CEO Bob Repovs says Samco’s willingness to invest in itself as a way of investing in its customers is key, adds Levesque. Promoting offerings, adding equipment to increase speed to market for customers, and expanding capabilities to open up areas and markets to jump into are vital.
“It’s the continuous investment in not only our resources and our talent pool but also the equipment and processing side,” says Levesque. “It’s very important that the growth in our capabilities and core competencies gives customers more confidence in what we can do and offer.”
Furthering fabrication
The fabrication division is a good example. Starting small five years ago, Samco saw the need and responded by investing and adding equipment, capabilities, and core competencies, along with vertical integration for internal support. “There are a lot of other fabrication shops and competition out there, but what we offer is engineering knowledge and backing, the equipment, and the ability to know where that customer wants to take their business.”
Samco’s vertical integration affords customers additional offerings including laser cutting of parts, brake presses, shears, bending, robotic welding, and certified welding. The bundling of customer needs from rolling to fabrication also gives clients economies of scale and the benefit of a one-stop shop. “The one-stop shop mentality works in leaps and bounds,” says Levesque, “not only the core competency of being able to offer all those different processes, but we’re already pre-qualified in terms of quality.”
Samco’s ISO certification is a designation the company takes “very seriously,” he says. “We have very high quality standards and requirements in-house.” Each of Samco’s different divisions is individually ISO certified, saving customers money, time, and effort, a huge benefit of vertical integration.
Building relationships
Samco’s growth comes in several different ways, and a particularly satisfying route is organic growth through existing relationships. Within the machinery division, founded 50 years ago, there are numerous longstanding relationships to this day.
“The machinery side is incredible—one of the first things that drew me to this company,” Levesque shares. “Building the rolling division was really extending our pride in what we’ve done on the machinery side, knowing that our machines have been out in the field for 40 years and our customers know they can come to us for quality.”
That continued focus on the customer and on building resources sets Samco apart. The company deems it vital to remain ahead of the curve, anticipate customer needs, and continuously develop core competencies.
Samco is also ahead in developing programs and software through its engineering group, with a “fantastic crew” of engineers developing their own intellectual property that can predict, meet, and keep pace with developments within AI.
“There’s an expectation from the marketplace that if it’s out there and if it’s AI, that should make [a client’s] process easier, and how are we addressing that?” says Levesque. “We’ve already been working on it. There’s constant R&D, and there’s investment. Resources, for us, include equipment and putting money back into research and development and understanding what the customer needs to be more successful and more efficient,” he says.
And while there’s competition out there—short-term suppliers from overseas who can undercut pricing by 40 to 50 percent—the big difference is they don’t have the service, he says. “They don’t have the quality, and that’s the one thing we talk to our customers about: we will not compete on price, and we’re not willing to, because it’s not all about price. It’s our service and our quality— our post-service quality and enduring service quality that keep them coming back. That’s what established us as a name out in the marketplace, and leveraging that name and the quality associated with that name makes life a lot easier when we talk to a customer.”
No matter the division he’s in, Levesque says it’s always a pleasure to sit down and talk very openly about what Samco does and offers. “It’s about clients knowing they can count on what the company does, knowing that the company will deliver, and knowing that the company will go to the ends of the Earth to meet their needs.”
