Skip to content

A wheel long time

Toyota’s CAPTIN aluminum wheel manufacturing plant in Tilbury celebrates 30 years.
41015southdeltaCAPTINOlafPaulH_2996
Longtime team members Olaf Kinghaug (on left) and Paul Featherstone show off some of the many wheel models manufactured at the CAPTIN (Canadian Autoparts Toyota) plant in Tilbury. This year marks the plant’s 30th anniversary.

It’s not surprising there so many longtime workers at the CAPTIN (Canadian Autoparts Toyota) plant in Tilbury.

CAPTIN manufactures aluminum wheels and wheel parts for every Toyota model sold in North America. If you’ve ever owned a Toyota, there’s a good chance the wheels you’ve driven on came from the Tilbury plant.

When operating at full capacity, the factory churns out more than 7,000 wheels a day, and close to two million annually

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the factory’s founding, and while the original crew barely numbered 25 employees, there are still a handful of them left.

Olaf Kringhaug is among them. A company man through and through, he was among the first wave of hires at CAPTIN, starting work at the factory back in 1986.

The employees are loyal to CAPTIN, he says, because CAPTIN has been loyal to them.

After the economic downturn of the late 2000s, and the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan, production at the plant almost ground to a halt.

Instead of closing its doors and laying off its full time employees until business picked back up, CAPTIN bent over backwards to keep everyone employed.

“Basically, we shut down for three months here. We cut back on some contract work, but never laid off any workers. That’s always been Toyota’s way,” says CAPTIN vice president Marc Vallee, adding since 1956 Toyota has maintained that commitment.

“If you’re working for the Big Three they’ll lay you off and bring you back,” Vallee says. “Here, we’ll keep the people cleaning, offer them vacation or time off. If it’s a short-term thing, two or three months, by time you’ve let those people go, half of them don’t want to come back. They find other jobs, and then you have to retrain them. And the impact is huge to the quality of the vehicle. And it’s just not our culture to do that.

“I think in the long haul your people pay you back 10 times over.”

Now that business has picked up at the plant, employees are repaying that loyalty.

“There’s loyalty here because there’s always job security,” says Kringhaug. “When we needed them, they were here for us, and now that they need us, we’re here for them.”

The plant is currently running three shifts on four production lines, 24 hours a day, anywhere from five to seven days a week.

It’s a far cry from 30 years ago, when a single shift worked a single production line.

“When we opened, there was really nothing like this anywhere in Canada,” says Kringhaug. Production was small scale during the early years, mainly serving overseas markets.

“No one could have expected us to grow like we have,” he says.

Toyota has invested more than a quarter of a billion dollars into the CAPTIN plant since 1983, when the plant was the first major tenant in the Tilbury industrial area. In that span, the plant has pumped out more than 27 million wheels, and with more than 350 full time employees, CAPTIN is one of the largest private employers in Delta.

Of those employees, the average CAPTIN team member has been with the company for close to 10 years, according to spokesperson Dinah Roberts.

“It’s the Toyota culture we have taken on,” she says.

While there are no current plans to expand operations at CAPTIN in the near future, Roberts said the plant has its sights set on adding higher quality premium wheels in the future.

“We’d like to bring in Lexus-line products,” she said. “Having those in your plant really takes things up a notch, so that’s our aspiration.”

 

The art of the wheel

Aluminum wheels are considered one of the most challenging parts to make because of safety requirements and the need for extensive styling and finishing. Using a water-cooled method for casting molten aluminum into a die creates a lighter but stronger product in less time.

The wheels start off as pure aluminum bricks. The bricks get melted down in one of the factory’s four furnaces, and then gets pumped into a die where it takes the shape of the wheel. After being cooled and hardened, the wheel is given a rough cut, valve and bolt holes are drilled, its surfaces are finished, and then it receives a powder coat paint job.

Throughout the process the wheels are being tested to ensure they meet Toyota’s rigorous quality and safety standards.

When Kringhaug first started, much of the manufacturing process was manually done, and wheels were even handpainted.

Today, almost the entire process is automated.

“Almost everyone’s position is an inspector,” he says. “You could take people out of a lot of areas, but you wouldn’t have anywhere near the same quality.”

If there’s the slightest imperfection, a flaw less than a size of a pinhead, the wheel is melted down and the aluminum reused.

When there’s a problem detected, the entire line gets shut down until the problem is discovered, and a solution is found.

“We’ll shut the line down for days and bring in the engineers if we have to,” says Kringhaug.

The approach is part of the Japanese philosophy of “kaizen,” meaning gradual positive change, and is central to Toyota’s corporate culture.

A quality product is a safe product, something every employee takes to heart.

“People are hurtling themselves down the road with their families on board on the wheels that we make,” says Kringhaug. “Everyone here feels that responsibility on their shoulders.”

Not surprisingly, there’s a fair share of Toyotas in the company parking lot. Kringhaug drives a Toyota Tundra, himself.

“If the rest of the car is made as well as we make the wheels, it’s got to be the best made car in the world,” he says with pride.

At home in Delta

Like many of the employees at CAPTIN, Kringhaug grew up here in South Delta. Being able to work in his own backyard his whole life means he’s been able to see his hometown grow, and CAPTIN grow right along with it.

Paul Featherstone has been with CAPTIN for 17 years and grew up in Tsawwassen. While the rotating shift work can be rough on family life, being so close to home in case of an emergency gives Featherstone peace of mind.

“For me, it was a no-brainer to come work here,” he says.

CAPTIN tries to recruit locally when hiring new team members, something that helps build a tight-knit community at the plant.

“The community where we work is extremely important to us,” says Roberts. “That’s all part of the Toyota culture we’ve taken on. We’ve always been strong on community involvement and environmental awareness.”

To that end CAPTIN budgets tens of thousands of dollars every year to give to local charitable organizations.

While the company previously cast its net wider to assist community organizations across the Lower Mainland, they have shifted their philosophy in recent years to focus on groups operating in the community where most of CAPTIN’s employees live.

Recently CAPTIN donated $10,000 to the Reach Child and Youth Development Society to help fund their proposed new facility in downtown Ladner. CAPTIN employees also volunteered their time to help put on the Reach for the Stars fundraising gala in February.

Over the years, CAPTIN has also made charitable donations to the Delta Hospital Foundation and Ladner-based B.C. & Alberta Guide Dogs Service.

CAPTIN’s workers are active in donating their time to various community groups such as the Burns Bog Conservation Society and Earthwise Society in Tsawwassen. CAPTIN recently donated close to $15,000 worth of picnic benches to Earthwise in celebration of its 30th anniversary.

The environmental focus is key for CAPTIN, and Toyota. Since 2004, the plant has maintained zero landfill status. Between 1997 and 2006, CAPTIN reduced its electricity and gas consumption by 14 per cent respectively.

During the same time period, the company reduced its general trash by 48 per cent and water consumption was reduced by 40 per cent. CAPTIN signed on with B.C. Hydro’s Power Smart program in 2003 and in 2005 became the first manufacturing company to be Power Smart certified.

“We want to build a better community,” says Roberts. “It’s where we work, and it’s where we live.”

-with files