Automotive News Canada - May 2017 - 3

SECOND FRONT

05.17

'Conflicting business' keeps Cohn & Wolfe out of race for Nissan PR job
Edelman is the new face
of communications
for the Nissan and Infiniti
brands in Canada
By BILL MCLAUCHLAN
TORONTO CORRESPONDENT

NISSAN HAS APPOINTED
communications and marketing company Edelman as its global public rela-

AutoCanada
management
shuffle comes
at a price
Executive
changes bring
$4.4 million in
one-time costs
By PERRY LEFKO
TORONTO CORRESPONDENT

AUTOCANADA INC.,
Canada's largest publicly
owned dealership group,
expensed $4.4 million in
two separate non-recurring
senior-management-transition costs in the past year
as part of a major shakeup
in its executive ranks.
Most of that amount,
reported in the company's 2016 Q2 report, included $2.7 million in non-recurring transition costs
related to the hiring of
Steven Landry, who joined
AutoCanada as chief executive officer on April 1, 2016.
He replaced Tom Orysiuk,
who continued as president of the Edmontonbased company. Landry
had worked in a variety of
executive roles with energy company ATCO Ltd.
and Canadian Utilities Ltd.
Before that, he was with
Chrysler for 27 years, holding positions such as chief
executive officer and president of DaimlerChrysler
Canada.
It was announced just
one month after Landry's
hiring that company
founder Pat Priestner had
assumed the role of non-executive chairman of the
board of directors with a
targeted retirement date.
It was also announced that
Steve Rose, the chief operating officer of AutoCanada,
planned to retire from his
position Sept. 30, 2016.
Orysiuk resigned as
president and as a member of the board of directors
March 17, 2017. He had been
with the company for a

SEE AUTOCANADA PAGE 25

Jonathan Adeshak, Nissan's chief
communications officer, set out to
"modernize" the company's strategy.

tions agency, cutting loose Cohn &
Wolfe in Canada after a 12-year relationship.
Edelman's appointment to the
Nissan Canada account results from a
review of the automaker's global public relations initiated by Jonathan
Adeshak, Nissan's chief communications officer, to "modernize" its communications strategy.
Adeshak said Edelman was awarded the global account, worth upward of
$13.7 million, after an extensive review
of four finalist agencies in March.

Because of "conflicting business
in other regions," Cohn & Wolfe was
unable to participate in the review,
said Heather Meehan, account group
director in the agency's Toronto office.
"This is difficult news because it is
not a reflection of our achievements
working with Nissan Canada, rather a
change in the strategic direction of the
global communications function," said
Meehan.
Timing for the transition has not yet

SEE NISSAN PAGE 26

Offshore imports plague
remanufacturing in Canada
Cheap labour is
luring business
away, so Canadian
companies have had
to get creative and
find new niches

An employee at Capital
Gear in Edmonton prepares to complete a
heavy-duty transmission
rebuild. Capital Gear
employs 28 people in
Alberta's capital.

It's been going down,
down, down, but now
we've hit the bottom and
it's going back up.

( P H O T O : C A P I TA L G E A R LT D . )

MIKE KELLY

By MARK RICHARDSON

D&V Electronics

TORONTO CORRESPONDENT

REMANUFACTURED PARTS
are big business in the auto
industry, but much of that
business is now offshore.
Canadian companies rebuild
automotive parts, but they're
mainly small- to mid-sized
businesses. The competition
for cheaper pricing is just
too intense for large-scale
Canadian industry to succeed.
"In terms of our business,
which is mostly alternators
and starters, there's hardly
any left in Canada," says Mike
Kelly, sales and marketing
manager for D&V Electronics.
The Woodbridge, Ont., company makes test equipment for
remanufacturers that is used
in 90 countries.
"Most of the remanufacturing is done offshore now;
China, Mexico, Malaysia,
Eastern Europe, anywhere
there's cheaper labour,"

thing, and the demand for
parts is growing.
"The average alternator or
starter lasts about eight years,
and eight or nine years ago, the
car business in North America
really sucked, so (remanufacturing) has been going through
a very slow spot," says Kelly.
"It's been going down,
down, down, but now we've hit
the bottom and it's going back
up. It follows a cycle the same
as new-car sales do, but just a
little bit different cycle."

SALES GROWTH IN CANADA
he said. "It's still a fairly
labour-intensive business. All
you're shipping is the cores [of
the products being rebuilt], so
they just fill up a container and
ship them around the world."
Those cores are then
rebuilt with new materials

TRANS-CANADA NEWS

5,000 KILOMETRES OF STORIES

Ottawa dealership serves
up thanks to volunteers
OTTAWA - Say it with sausage. And pancakes. And of
course, maple syrup. For Dow
Honda in Ottawa, an annual Thank You Breakfast is
a fitting, and filling, way to
express appreciation to community volunteers.
The first breakfast took
place last year, shortly after
Dow's move to a new location,
to welcome refugees arriving
in Ottawa and to honour the

where needed, sometimes with
retooled parts built to a higher standard than the original,
but sometimes with lower-quality materials. In the remanufacturing business, trust and a
good relationship between supplier and distributor is every-

Hortense Mvuemba, left, and
Aida El-Khoury, who help refugees establish new homes
in Ottawa, join Dow Honda's
Jeff Mierins at the dealership's
annual Thank You Breakfast.
(PHOTO: ROB BOSTELAAR).

volunteers who work with the
newcomers. For this year's
event on April 28, the guest
list was expanded to include
anyone who donates time to a
community project.
While also donating cash,
and last year a van, to Ottawa
causes, dealer principal Jeff
Mierins says the breakfast
allows a more personal connection between employees
and their breakfast guests.
"They see how important it is
to volunteer."

One of the largest remanufacturing companies on the
continent, Philadelphia-based
Cardone, opened distribution warehouses in Toronto
and Edmonton in the last
five years. Spokesman Kevin
Feeley said Cardone has seen

SEE REMAINING PAGE 25
Factory of the Future
about two years away
WINNIPEG - A $60-million
aerospace and automotive
research-and-development
centre is still in the works for
Winnipeg, with the federal
government awaiting responses to a request for proposals
in its search for property on
which to build the so-called
Factory of the Future.
Operated by the National
Research Council, the centre
would investigate the use of
advanced materials and techniques for both the automo-

SEE TRANS-CANADA PAGE 26

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Automotive News Canada - May 2017