By Lindsey Cooke
Toronto, Ontario — December 3, 2018 — CSN St. Clair Auto Repair in Sarnia, Ontario is the first Canadian facility to equip GreenTech Dryers installed. The Italian-designed gas-dryers are robotic and meant to improve production time. More importantly, they can be retrofitted to an already existing space.
With only one paint booth in the shop, Richard searched for solutions to increase the production time. He had plans to expand the shop building and to have another paint booth installed, until he realized how much it would actually cost for his business.
Bellavance told Collision Repair that he attended a CCIF conference in Toronto about a year ago and watched a presentation done by owner of Elite Bodyshop Solutions, Dave Luehr. Luehr’s the author of The Secrets of America’s Greatest Bodyshops, where Bellavance had first discovered the GreenTech Dryers.
After reviewing his options, he had two GreenTech Dryers installed, costing him a total of $250,000.
Before with only one paint booth, the shop could get through four or five cars a day but now with the two robotic dryers, Richard says that number will most likely change to eight or 10 vehicles a day.
“It’s going to increase our capacity to about 50 percent…It’s definitely a game changer,” he says.
“We’ve had customers call us and ask if their cars went through the robotic dryers,” said shop general manager Colin Bellavance.
The dryer was installed about a month ago, accompanied by Greentech’s national sales manager Phil Zylstraand and the CEO of Greentech, Francesco Bertoli, who came all the way from Italy to see the first shop in Canada use their product.
“This is all very exciting. We’re looking forward to see what it can do for our business,” says Colin Bellavance.
CSN St. Clair Auto Repair has been a family owned business for close to 59 years, and was founded by Richard Bellavance’s father.
