The Dyck brothers have been putting their money where their mouths are
for years. They’re now adding their future to the increasingly large
bet.
But Lloyd Dyck, president and co-owner of Brett-Young Seeds, said he
isn’t worried about the $20.7 million investment his relatively small
seed company is making in high-tech research and development, even if
it has swallowed up his company’s profits and sent it to the bank to
borrow money.
“If I wasn’t here all the time I would be (worried),” said Dyck, whose
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company’s new suite of laboratories is trying to develop cutting edge
canola products such as sulfur-providing rhizobacteria.
Lloyd and his brother Tim have staked their company’s future on
avoiding the commodity business model, and Lloyd said they are willing
to take risks and try to grow rather than be cautious and static. That
means trying to develop new products and markets rather than fighting
for a bigger piece of an existing pie.
“You continually have to invest, but if you plan right, if you work
right, it can be rewarding at the other end if you can deliver
something that people value,” said Dyck, who works out of the company’s
head office in Winnipeg.
“We like to place our emphasis on where we think the opportunities are.
The idea of doing something for less money than somebody else is doing
it doesn’t make any sense to us whatsoever. If we can do it because we
have a strategic advantage, or because we can offer something unique to
the marketplace, then we’ll get involved in it. We just focus on
opportunities. We do not focus on areas that other people are mucking
around in.”
Brett-Young Seeds concentrates on three markets: canola, forage grass
and turf grass seed. It’s where they think they, and the Prairies, have
unique advantages.
Dyck is most excited about the American turf grass market, which is
used for such things as lawns, golf courses and sports fields. It’s a
growing market and sales of turf grass seed to U.S. buyers now make up
about half of Brett-Young’s annual sales, which Dyck said are more than
$50 million.
As the U.S. population grows, Dyck expects to see the market grow.
He also expects to see the forage grass seed market expand in Western
Canada, with more prairie land turning over to hay production for
livestock feeding.
He thinks the canola market will keep demanding more valuable
innovations, so he wants his company to produce and supply leading
varieties with unique products, such as the sulfur-providing
rhizobacteria that he believes will raise canola yields by 10 to 15
percent.
The company’s gleaming new labs at its Winnipeg headquarters are taking
what he believes are proven strains of rhizobacteria, developed with
Agriculture Canada researchers, and trying to find ways to make them
commercially viable.
Research at Brett-Young’s canola plots is focused on developing
varieties with new, genetically modified traits that Dyck thinks
growers will want. The rhizobacteria project does not involve genetic
modification and is separate from the variety research.
Lloyd oversees Brett-Young’s strategic direction and planning, while
Tim focuses on new business development and sales. The brothers work
together, but do they tend to easily agree with each other’s ideas?
“Not really,” Lloyd said with a laugh. “As good as most brothers do, I
think. We try.”
But the strong-willed men, both in their 40s, have managed to work
together since they took over the company 14 years ago, when their
father, Peter, died. Working together was something he pounded into
their heads when they were children.
“Our father always said we have our own business, and if someone in the
family wants to work there, they can,” Lloyd said. “Work together. Work
with family.”
Lloyd and Tim have worked with their two other brothers and a sister.
Only one sibling, a sister, has not worked at the company.
Peter became president and part-owner of Brett-Young Seeds in 1972,
when he bought the company name and with some investors began building
it up as a serious seed business. The original owners, Bill Brett and
Bob Young, who started the business in 1934, had sold it to McKenzie
Seeds in 1967.
Lloyd and Tim began working with their father and in the years since
his death have both been committed to pouring profits back into the
business, which some of Brett-Young’s shareholders were not as keen
about.
So they gradually bought out the shareholders and now own the whole
company. If their research and development yields the products they
expect, their present growth rate of 10 to 15 percent per year could
rise.
It would be easy to sell the company to a bigger player if the new
products become a success, Dyck said, but the last thing he wants to do
is walk away from the company he has built.
“I see this personally,” Dyck said. “It’s a legacy. We’re not looking
to sell.”
Selling the company to someone else wouldn’t just take the brothers
out of the business they are committed to, “it would pull out the rug
from under the company’s growth, because the company would have to
finance the purchase by whoever buys it. Then the company stalls its
growth and development,” he said.
“We think there are so many opportunities, we just want to see it
continue to grow.”
