View looking north over Vancouver inner harbour toward Grouse and Seymour Mountains,
December 29, 2014.
To all our good friends and business associates:
We have commenced with our fresh start in 2015.
Some of us even went for a swim in the ocean to celebrate the first day of 2015!
I can assure you that the air was only slightly cooler than the water (+4 C. versus +5 C., respectively).
I want to say thank you for your support in 2014 and I trust all had a safe holiday season.
2014 will go down in the books as the 2nd best year in our company history and a record year for panel sales and shipments.
Our staff in Vancouver have remained the same doing the same great job. You will soon be able to take a look at each of us with the launch of our new web site in the first quarter of this year.
We now have completed the conversion of our new business management system, called IMS, as our old management system, LumberTrac, was switched off December 31st, 2014 after 14 years of operation. With IMS, a new customer portal will soon be operational through our web site for customer access to order lineup, shipment details and relevant documentation.
We are now fully operational with all of our SPF J-grade lumber now being handled at Euro Asia Transload, completing that conversion to undercover storage in Vancouver.
2014 was the year of travel:
- Our sales staff were all busy with many customer visits to our member company operations and travel to the market.
- There was not one month in 2014 where we did not have customers visiting our Western Canadian operations with our staff or our staff in the overseas market place.
2014 was also a year of giving:
- Financial support from Interex was directed to the Western Forest Products families in Nanaimo, BC to help them get past the tragedy of April 2014.
- We had also had a record year of giving with the United Way of the Lower Mainland. In 2014, our Vancouver office contributed $9,260 to the 2014 United Way campaign. Thanks all and thanks Rob for organizing this.
- In December, we revised our approach for distributing our Christmas Gift Baskets and took those savings and donated $1,500 to the Lower Mainland Food Bank.
We look beyond the strife that unfortunately takes place in our world.
We give thanks for our health and our strong relationships that have endured.
We thank you again for your support.
From myself and all of our staff here at Interex Forest Products, we wish you all the best for a healthy and prosperous New Year in 2015.
2013 was a year of transition for our company. We wished our long standing president, Mr. Glen Wilson, a happy retirement. We said the same to our out-going president in Tokyo, Mr. Seiji Omote. These two individuals are respected and admired by their peers in our company and industry. In recognition of these milestones for both Glen and Seiji, we invited them to address the guests (customers, government officials, family and friends alike) at our 20th Anniversary reception held at the Palace Hotel in downtown Tokyo.