Pierre Harvey, Harvey International, left; Steve Malenfant, founder and CEO, Inter USA Industrial Group
A Quebec businessman chose northern New Hampshire to launch his new company, which he expects to grow over the next few years to include up to 50 employees.
Steve Malenfant, CEO and founder of Groupe Industriel Interprovincial Inc. of Magog, QC, led the ribbon cutting ceremony on Sept. 26 for his new venture, Inter USA Industrial Group, in Littleton.
The company offers a service, providing teams trained for industrial equipment installation, planned machine maintenance, relocation, re-shoring and outage/shutdown services to a variety of industries such as pulp and paper; wood processing; rubber and plastics; steel and metal; food processing, and more.
The company’s success is based on its mission of helping clients and the guiding principle of building the trust that is essential between the client’s inhouse teams and the teams from Inter USA. Inter-USA’s employees go through a thorough technical program before working on job sites, Malenfont said, “to make sure our employees are the best millwrights available and that they are skilled at developing strong relationships with our client’s inhouse teams.
Ribbon cutting of Inter USA Industrial Group in Littleton.
Founded in 2003, its Quebec counterpart employs more than 140 employees and the long term plan for the new US-based company is to hire and train between 25 and 50 employees in Littleton, most of them millwrights, engineering technicians and welders.
“We chose northern New Hampshire because we know that labor is available and because of the close proximity to sawmills, pulp and paper, steel and metal fabricators,” Malenfant said. “We will hire locally and pair the US employees with experienced Quebec millwrights from our head office until they are trained and have integrated the Inter USA business model. We will train them so that they can take over and start doing jobs quickly in New England.”
Beno Lamontagne and Michael Bergeron of the Department of Business and Economic Affairs first connected with the company at a dinner in Quebec hosted by the Division of Economic Development several years ago. Over that time, they worked with Malenfant to help him with his real estate search, obtaining visas, the hiring process and business incorporation.
Tags: business expansion, business recruitment, Littleton, Quebec