GHY International Stays True to Winnipeg in Majority Sale to SeaFort


Trade Update • Jan. 19, 2025

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HY International, one of the oldest on-going companies in the province (124 years) has effectively been held by the same family for four generations.

The great-grandfather of current co-CEO, Rick Riess, started the customs brokerage business in 1901. It operated as a small family business for two generations. Under Rick’s father it grew more substantially. Since the early 1980s, when Rick became involved, it has grown five- or six-fold.

Revenue has been growing annually for many years, but GHY has just completed three of its best and, according to Riess, is at its most profitable.

No one would take issue were he to sell the Winnipeg-based company to the highest bidder with whatever terms and conditions he wanted to include — the way the vast majority of businesses are sold. After all, Riess is turning 70 and there is no obvious family successor.

But he was determined to find a partner that would buy into the idea of the value in the legacy of the company as is.

“Rick did not want to be swallowed up by a big mega-corporation,” co-CEO Chris Bachinski said. “He wanted someone to help keep the legacy going. He’s had many large companies approach him asking to sell, but they did not check the right boxes.”

It took about two years, but this week GHY closed a deal that will see Halifax-based private equity firm SeaFort Capital (backed by members of the McCain and Sobey families) become majority owner. Terms were not disclosed.

Unlike most in the private equity world, SeaFort is a long-term investor. Riess and Bachinski believe the deal accomplishes what they set out to do: securing the company’s future as a Winnipeg-based business that can continue to grow as its own platform operation, with existing staff remaining in place and senior management able to become equity holders.

GHY has a staff of 170 (including 70 based in the U.S.) and a long history of service with plenty of loyal customers, many of them also Winnipeg-based companies.

It’s the kind of business that has helped grow the export capacity of the local economy over the years. While it now has clients across the country and in the U.S., Riess and his team very much see themselves as a Winnipeg company, supporting the local arts and culture and charitable enterprises.

It’s not a slight to imagine the goal of many entrepreneurs is to build a business that can be sold for a good profit. But for a community like Winnipeg to continue growing, it’s likely more important than it is in other places that a good portion of those businesses remain and grow here.

That’s what Riess and his team wanted for GHY International.

“I wanted to be able to do this while I was still healthy,” said Riess. “I wanted to avoid being in a takeover situation. I wanted to find someone who would invest in us and further grow what we have built over 124 years. That was critical. There was no way we would do it any other way.”

Riess retains significant equity, senior management become part-owners and Winnipeg-based Jessiman Family Investments Inc. came aboard alongside SeaFort allowing local and insider investors to retain 40 per cent of the company.

He didn’t want to see the Winnipeg family business streamlined and tucked into some other company.

“We said if we are going to sell any part of the business, it had to be to someone who sees it as a platform for the future,” Riess said.

Not that GHY could be compared to Bison Transport, but when the Jessiman family sold Bison it, too, was to a company (James Richardson & Sons Ltd.) that wanted to retain Bison’s legacy, including its roots in Winnipeg.

The fact the customs brokerage business is likely to be in demand in the coming weeks and months — with disruptive trade conditions looming on the horizon with a new administration in the U.S. — was not what was driving the deal.

Like many who understand well how integrated the Canadian and U.S. economies are, Riess does not believe high U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods will be something that could last long.

Such institutional knowledge is the stuff communities like Winnipeg need to continue to retain in-house as much as it can.

Written By:
Martin Cash

Martin Cash
Reporter

Martin Cash is a business reporter/columnist who’s been on that beat for the Free Press since 1989. He’s a graduate of the University of Toronto and studied journalism at Ryerson (now Toronto Metropolitan University). Read more about Martin.

Sourced: Winnipeg Free Press

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