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Canadian firm signs major construction deal
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SEAN STANLEIGH - The Globe and Mail
The latest news and information for entrepreneurs from across the web universe, brought to you by the Report on Small Business team. ICI gets its big deal done
Toronto-based Innovative Composites International Inc. on Monday announced it had signed a contract to supply about $68 million (U.S.) of housing for large-scale projects in Haiti and Ghana. The deal with Barclays Gedi Group, a U.S.-based construction conglomerate, follows 16 months of joint efforts to secure such contracts, and ICI will now begin the process of establishing a second manufacturing facility in South Carolina.
The company has committed to start supplying homes as soon as the new plant is up and running. It is expected that first houses will be shipped in the first quarter of next year.
ICI develops innovative products for the construction, transportation and fire fighting industries.
When Report on Small Business wrote about ICI late last year, the company's biggest challenge was the long sales cycle common in the housing market. “Certain customers – such as the government and the military – the decisions they make are not quick. We’re weathering this cusp while waiting for the significant contracts,” Ilja Troitschanski, the company’s chief financial officer, said in December.
Looks like ICI finally got what it was looking for. Read more about it in this Reuters story.
More bleak hiring numbers out of the U.S.
Almost two-thirds (64 per cent) of small-business executives surveyed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in a report to be released Monday said they were not expecting to add to their payrolls in the next year and another 12 per cent planned to cut jobs. A story by The Wall Street Journal also pointed out that 19 per cent said they would expand their work forces.
The report comes on the heels of a U.S. Labor Department report Friday that showed employers south of the border added few jobs in June, and unemployment rose to 9.2 per cent. The bleak figures joined other data showing the recovery losing momentum in recent months, which has caused many analysts and policy makers to lower their forecasts for economic growth in the second half of the year.
Charges laid under Canada Small Business Financing Act
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