Business View Oceania | December 2019

107 108 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA DECEMBER 2019 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA DECEMBER 2019 and, on January 1st, 2007, we changed the name to UCC Industries International (UCCI), complete with own branding identity, logo, and marketing tagline: “Your Partners in Building Excellence.” By this point, we were truly an international company, purchasing from Europe and the United States, and filling in various niches in the Canadian marketplace.” UCCI has different product line divisions for different markets, but, with one exception, they’re not separate entities as they all fall under the UCCI banner. However, in 2010, during the midst of the last recession, UCCI had an opportunity to expand into the United States with their Lindapter Steel Clamping product line, following a change in the way that Lindapter UK went to market in North America. In order to make this transition to the USA successful, Hughes and Vice President Cid Connon formed a new company known as UCC Steelwork Connections Inc (UCCSC). UCCSC opened in Tampa Florida on April 1, 2011, and in Syracuse NY on April 1, 2013. “At present we have 17 employees at UCCI in Pickering, ON, and 5 employees with UCCSC in the USA - two in Syracuse NY, one in Philadelphia PA, one in Atlanta GA, and one in Tampa FL.” Hughes notes. “UCCI is still in the same location in Pickering, where we have just recently expanded again. We expanded once in 1998, and again in 2016, increasing the Pickering location to 18,000 sq ft. We have 3,000 sq. ft. of office and warehousing space in both the Syracuse and Tampa locations of UCCSC.” “We do a little bit of foreign distribution, but only in Central America and the Caribbean,” Hughes explains. “We do not sell any of our items back into Europe, though many of our customers do work all over the world. We’ve completed many interesting projects with our Canadian and American customers from Iceland to Antarctica, South America to Asia and Australia, and certainly all across the United States and Canada.” There is, of course, a lot of competition, especially in the Unistrut Metal Framing market, UCCI’s original product line. The Unistrut Metal Framing UCC INDUSTR I ES INTERNAT IONAL