Rural
Investment
CARM member Horizon Builders Ltd.
is helping Koch Fertilizer bring
services under one roof in Brandon
It’s not every day that a project with an
overall cost of $33 million comes up for
bid in a rural farming city like Brandon,
Man. A project of that scope and size
lands in a community every few years, and
that’s if you’re lucky.
Luckily, Koch Fertilizer needed a
new headquarters in Brandon to move
some of their operations away from the
adjacent existing plant site. As the current
plant is classed as a petrol-chemical
facility, visitors are required to meet some
safety and security requirements when
entering. This new headquarters will
bring some of the operations scattered
throughout Brandon under one roof and
remove some of those requirements for
visitors of petrol-chemical facilities.
Of the five contractors that bid on the
project, local company Horizon Builders
Ltd. won the contract. Founded in
Brandon 35 years ago, Horizon Builders
started out as a residential contractor
before moving on to commercial and
industrial projects. Horizon had previous
experience at the Koch plant site, ranging
from small concrete repair work, to
large foundations and structures. Other
recent high-profile industrial projects for
Horizon include the Saputo Dairy Plant
Expansion, parts of the multi-phase City
of Brandon Water Reclamation facility
and multiple projects for Husky Ethanol.
Still, even with its experience, the Koch
Fertilizer headquarters was the largest
industrial contract Horizon Builders Ltd.
had ever taken on. With the project scope
presenting its own unique challenges and
a global pandemic that requires unprecedented
standards in health and safety, the
company is working to complete the project
by the end of November 2020.
“It feels great to be involved in a project
of this scale with a company that’s so
integral to our community’s economy,”
said Branden Smith, project manager for
the Koch Fertilizer Headquarters and one
of the people responsible for bringing this
project to Horizon Builders Ltd.
Horizon is building the full development
of the property from scratch,
including parking lots, roadways and a
two-storey building with 55,000 square
feet of floor area, which includes offices,
By Aaron Broverman
28 | Issue 1 2020 www.carm.ca
/www.carm.ca