On May 24 and 25, Britespan Building System Inc. opened its doors to allow customers and community members to tour its manufacturing facility at 71 North St. in Wingham.
The open house was a celebration of its nine years of growth as a business, and it was also a chance for people to understand how their engineered fabric buildings are made.
“When we started Britespan nine years ago, we thought of it as a company that was going to supply Ontario customers with fabric-covered buildings,” Britespan CEO Ben Hogervorsk said. “But today we have dealers across Canada, the U.S.A. and Europe.”
As one of the 500 fastest-growing companies in Canada in 2016, 2017 and 2018, Britespan claims its fabric buildings are not only incredibly durable and versatile, but also cost-effective. Hogervorsk credited its success to the “innateness of our dealers and our staff, always pushing us to do better and to be more creative … we couldn’t have done it without our staff and dealers across the world.”
Britespan explains on its website that the benefits of its fabric buildings are: natural light and ventilation, wide-open interiors, uniquely engineered to meet specific weather conditions and building codes, speed of construction, corrosion resistance and local support from local experts.
There are three common misconceptions about fabric buildings, the first being that they're only for agriculture, which is false. Britespan fabric buildings have been used for commercial warehousing and agriculture, to marine, aviation and sports applications.
The second and third misconceptions are that fabric structures are not durable, and that the covers do not last long.
Fabric buildings have been available on the market for nearly 50 years and, as you can imagine, not all are created equal. Britespan credits its structures' success to its building materials, and its unique engineering and designs, which are custom to each building project. It also claims that, if installed correctly, a fabric cover can last more than 20 years.