Serving the Mississauga and Brampton Business Communities A Division of metroland media group ltd. CIRCULATION — 34,500 Ready for market Publications Mail Agreement #41634024 MAIL TO: T By Rick Drennan here’s something timid about the Canadian psyche – especially when it comes to business. We were known the world over as producers of primary products like wood, coal, oil, gold, and even beaver pelts. If it was in, on, or running along the ground, we’d find it, mine it, drill it or kill it, and then send it unrefined to other countries like England or the U.S. to manufacture it into high-tech end products. We were a low-tech nation. Stymied by the polemics of production. Or too damn lazy to even try. The productivity gap between Canada and the developed world wasn’t just narrow, but a sixlane highway. We couldn’t manufacture anything of value, and if we did (the Avro Arrow) we didn’t have the stomach to get it to market. It’s early afternoon in mid-winter at a nondescript industrial mall in mid-Mississauga (407 Matheson Blvd.). It’s hard to imagine that inside a rather drab brown-brick building a mind-boggling instrument – developed by some very brainy employees with PhDs and engineering degrees from some of the finest schools on the planet – might transform the business world forever, putting Canada in the forefront as a modern-day, high-tech innovator. Yes, the high-definition airborne gravity gadiometer (HD-AGG™) is a resource discovery tool that makes the earth’s crust virtually transparent (you can see as deep as 15 km), and brings into sharp focus how impressive Gedex Inc. is, and what its future prospects might be. It has taken untold hours and over $88 million to bring the HD-AGG system to market. “It’s the most exciting thing we have ever made,” said Mississauga resident William Breukelman (Order of Canada), the company founder. That’s saying a mouthful since Breukleman is also responsible for the commercial success of IMAX techology, as well as Sciex Corp., a revolutionary health care provider that created highspeed and ultra-trace analytical instrumentation. Gedex Inc. is the sum of its considerable parts, which includes Breukelman’s son David, a former investment banker, and a bevy of madly brilliant scientists. But I’m here to interview its freshly minted President, Chuck Allen. This blond-haired Etobicoke resident comes from a sports background. His dad was a semi-pro ball player, and he loved to play all sports, too, although his real talent was in education, then business. He’s now been charged with turning a double play: reworking Gedex’s business model, and getting the HD-AGG system to the commercial market. Allen’s background has prepped him perfectly for the job ahead. The Alberta native understands Canadian business history and Gedex’s place in it. He has some street cred, too: 20 years of successfully creating strategic, fiscal and operational growth and leadership in the mineral, oil and gas, energy, cleantech and technology sectors. He is comfortable in both monetizing Canadian mining properties and recognizing opportunities for creating growth. In his career, he has originated/executed over $1 billion in equity and debt financings and $5 billion in M&A transactions. A graduate of the University of Calgary with a Bachelor in Education and a LLB from the same school, he’s been CEO or executive vice-president of five public companies listed on Canadian, U.S. and African Exchanges. Cont. on page 2 Best Business Publication SNA Suburban Newspapers of America $2—february 2015 Charles (Chuck) Allen, the new president Gedex Inc. Photo by Stephen Uhraney Mississauga: 50 Burnhamthorpe Road West, Suite 900 Toronto West: 701 Evans Avenue, 8thFloor 416.613.3100 416.626.6000 www.businesstimes.on.ca February 2015 - BUSINESS TIMES 2 NEWS Talented team drives Gedex success Cont. from page 1 He’s also a volunteer advisor with the MARS Discovery District in Toronto. David Breukelman says he is the “ideal person” to propel Gedex forward. There’s no GPS system yet invented that can help a company find its way. Many firms have failed in the attempt. But Gedex is different. Good different. World changing different. “We have the opportunity to be transformational in sub-surface imaging,” says Allen. He helped rework Gedex’s schemas, and in other ways, he’s trying to accomplish a business end-around: selling a made-inCanada technology that assists companies and nations tap into Chuck ‘their’ primary product potential, like oil, gas, water, diamonds and every mineral known to man. We can help those “who haven’t yet recognized their wealth,” said Allen, speaking passionately from his unpretentious office. Great minds inventing innovative products has intersected with the business world before – with mixed results. The road to commercialization is a long one, and often fraught with peril, and dwindling financing is often the reason. That hasn’t been a problem at Gedex. “Our shareholders like what they’re hearing,” said Allen. What they’re hearing and seeing is an infusion of energy, led by Allen, who’s not only bullish on the product (which he calls, “beyond anyone’s imagination”) and eager to tap into the money-making op- portunities available. Unspooling the procedural spaghetti to get a product to market needs guts and guile and clearheaded thinking, plus a total buy-in from those on the inside and outside of a company. The athletic Allen (he once got a try-out in the Pittsburgh Pirates’ organization), seems perfectly poised to play the lead role. He once ran an oil and gas company in concert with the Cuban government (Allen and his family lived there for five years), and he saw firsthand how political interference sometimes trumps logic and business rationale. That’s not the case here. Ottawa has already provided funding to the project through its Allen Federal Economic Development Agency for southern Ontario. And federal officials have visited the Mississauga site to see up-close the wonders of this new imaging tool. The testing period for the HD-AGG system is almost over, and Allen has installed a “timeline for commercialization.” He expects the first survey contracts in Q2, and will be actively pursuing more contracts in Q3 and Q4. Still, the long-term goal is to get better year after year, sharpening the business model, and improving the technology. The talented GEDEX technology team, and the HD-AGG. Missing: Glen and Wayne Sincarsin. “Business is like the shark,” Allen explains. “The Photo by Stephen Uhraney moment you stop moving, you die.” What this means to the great big world is that the That means investing additional capital into R&D, gas can be. Drilling a dry hole can cost a firm upnever-ending search for valuable underground rewards of $10 to $100 million. and making Gedex a model for the world. Gedex’s HD-AGG system can substantially re- sources including water, oil, gas and diamonds can Allen knows how expensive prospecting for oil or duces the risk of that happening. Still, he said, it’s now be done in a way that is faster, more cost effiimportant not to get overly excited. Business suc- cient, gives greater certainty about the location and cess is often driven as much by timing as technolgi- nature of subsurface deposits, achieves improved cal advancements. Already, we’ve seen how plung- accuracy and is more environmentally friendly. Gedex might finally end the need to blow holes in ing oil prices may delay bidding on some oil and gas exploration. But in the end, Gedex’s techology is a the earth’s surface to find out what’s below. It could game-changer, and its founders, scientists, finan- dramatically change how prospecting is conducted cial backers, talented staff, and chief executive, are throughout the world, saving resource companies (and countries) both time and millions. ready for the next step. The HD-AGG system is a precision instrument “[The HD-AGG system] is the last cookie in the cookie jar,” William Breukelman told the Business that’s installed into a low-flying airplane (such as a DASH 8) and flown by a specially trained pilot. TakTimes last year. Efficiently and precisely measuring differences in ing imaging to this level of sophistication is like noththis subtle gravitational pull in conditions replicating ing Allen – or the world – has ever seen. Gedex is poised to propel Canadian business inthe cold temperature of outer space is what the HDAGG device does. It measures changes in gravita- terests forward by marketing a new techology that tional pull accurately within the width of a nucleus might revolutionize how we find primary products, of an atom, in a cryogenic environment, that does like coal, oil, gold, water. What this made-in-Canada success story can’t not vary more than one-millionth of a degree from 4 degrees Kelvin. It measures these changes in the help you find, are beaver pelts. Which is okay, eh? earth’s gravitational field in sub-parts per billion with – with files from Joanne Lovering a reading every 60 metres. ‘We can help those who haven’t yet recognized their wealth.’