New ownership for Barway Plastic Equipment

A well-known machinery and equipment sales firm in Canada’s plastics sector is now under new ownership.

Barway Plastic Equipment Inc., headquartered in Vaudreuil-Dorion, Quebec, has been supplying the plastics industry for almost 30 years, since its founding in 1993 by industry veteran Wayne Hart. Barway serves plastics processers in Eastern Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes by representing Haitian Corp. and Zhafir Plastics Machinery, and also addresses processor needs with access to other major equipment suppliers such as Advantage Engineering, BinMaster, Kongskilde, Lorenz Conveying, Maguire Products, Munchy, Novatec Inc., Rotogran International, Star Automation, and TEC. And Barway also offers a full line of its own silos.

Hart sold the company  in July of this year to machinery installation specialist Marc Viau and his sons Alex and Antoine. Marc Viau now serves as Barway’s president, and Alex and Antoine are both vice presidents. The Viau family had worked with Barway for years as a contractor for the installation of equipment and silos through Saint Zotique, Que.-based Mecanique Industrielle M.M.V. Inc., a machinery installation and servicing company founded by Marc Viau over 25 years ago. “We had developed a good relationship with Wayne through our installation business, and when he announced his plans to sell, he offered me the chance to buy Barway and I accepted,” Marc Viau said. “My sons now run Barway with me, so it’s completely family-owned. My sons started working at Barway in October 2021 in order to become more familiar with the business before we bought it, and they’re now totally up to speed.”

Barway will continue to represent all of the existing machinery lines, Marc Viau said, but will also add installation services courtesy of MMV. “Barway customers can now have both the new equipment and the installation,” he said. And the new Barway is also offering modification and fabrication of custom metal parts for all industries in its fabrication location in Saint Zotique, he added.

So, it’s not quite the same Barway as you might remember. “I handle all of the on-road sales, Peter Booth handles our inside sales, and we’re looking to add another sales person for the road,” Marc Viau said. “The Barway name is well established, but we’re a young company again and we’re looking to grow as quickly as possible. And we’ll be exhibiting at the Expoplast show in Montreal in November, to show off some products and to let as many industry people as possible know that we have new ownership.”