EXCERPTS from Burnaby Now Article
Dave Ritchie takes no credit for the gleaming new
164,000-square-foot headquarters of Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers that
officially opened on Oct. 29 in the Big Bend area of South Burnaby.Ritchie,
chairman emeritus of the heavy-equipment auction service, helped start
the company in 1958 in Kelowna, but he's now content to let the new
generation of Ritchie employees lead the company to heights not even he
could imagine."It's a pretty cool building, and it's a pretty
practical building," said Ritchie. "When we first came to Burnaby in
1963, we had a really small facility on the old Marine Drive. … Who
would have thought we'd end up back in Burnaby with a facility like
this?"Ritchie
walks proudly in the building that currently houses 312 full-time and
30 part-time employees. The company, which had previously had its
headquarters in Richmond, needed to find a place that could house up to
700 employees because, unlike most companies during the economic
recession, Ritchie Bros. is thriving."We tend to do well in good
times and bad times," said Ritchie Bros. chief executive officer Peter
Blake. "In good times, companies are looking to upgrade, and in bad
times, well, sometimes they have to sell off their machinery. … And
since we're a global company, we are selling product in Edmonton to
bidders in Saudi Arabia, or we're selling product from Dubai to
Australia."…..For both Blake and Ritchie, their favourite place in the entire building is the child-care facility, which has room for 45 children."It kept on coming up in our surveys that child care was important," he said. "I've got two young children myself, so I heard what everybody was saying.""I think it really speaks to the family atmosphere we want to create," said Ritchie."We want our employees and their families to be happy, so having their children taken care of safely is important to us because it's important to our employees."
via www2.canada.com
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