The Rural Voice, 1992-09, Page 32Big '0'
celebrates
25 years
below ground
Grant Kime, President of Big '0' has watched
his company grow to prominence in both '
farm and commercial drainage products lik4
these huge plastic culverts.
If Grant Kime hadn't thought it
would be too hard to make a living
from farming hc might never have
become an accountant.
If hc hadn't been an accountant
with a yen for farming he might not
have recognized the opportunity
when he tricd to order clay tile for his
farm back in the mid-1960s and was
told he would be put on a three-year
waiting list.
If this unique combination of
talents and interests hadn't come
together in one man, farmers across
Ontario might not be putting plastic
tile under the ground to tile their
fields.
Kime's father had been an
accountant and the family purchased
a farm as a weekend retreat instead of
a cottage when Grant was about 10
years old. He loved the farm life and
though he followed his father in
becoming an accountant, his love of
the land kept him in the country as
much as possible.
It was that farming connection that
led to the germ of the idea for Big
'0'. "I went to purchase clay tile in
28 THE RURAL VOICE
1964 or '65 and was put on a three-
year waiting list. That said
something. There was a huge
message there," Kime says with a
chuckle.
Realizing there was a shortage of
supply, the accountant in him said
by Keith Roulston
there was an opportunity to help fill
that need. A group of businessmen
started looking at the idea.
It was 25 years ago in August and
September when meetings to
organize Big '0' were held with the
company being incorporated in
December of that year. The first
production came out of the company
the next year.
Kime originally looked at the
possibility of purchasing a clay tile
plant. "Fortunately we did some soil
tests before we went ahead and found
out that if we put in a more modern
operation we would have only had
about five years' clay supply."
Next the partners looked at
concrete tile as the way to go and
actually had deposits with a company
in Wisconsin for state-of-the-art
equipment to make four- and six-inch
tile. "Probably a week after we had
made the deposit we became aware of
corrugated plastic pipe. It had just
entered the market the early part of
that year in the United States using
German technology. We called and
talked to the fellows who had started
the company. They told us what they
were doing and we realized we were
on the wrong track and had better
reverse." They dropped the deposits
for the concrete tile equipment and by
the end of February, 1968 had
ordered equipment from Germany for
the first factory to make corrugated
plastic pipe in Canada.
Huron County was chosen as the
location of the company's plant
because the partners looked at the
location of other tile drain
manufacturers at the time, and looked
at the likely growth in the market.
"Huron County was primarily a
livestock area at that time but was
rapidly moving toward cash -cropping
and drainage was essential."