International Erosion Controls Systems has grown over the years to the point where the Rodney company is providing massive, specially-manufactured concrete units for Metrolinks in Toronto, for projects across Ontario and Quebec, Western Canada, and soon for a project in Africa.

Located at 22295 Hoskins Line in Rodney, and with 120 employees, IECS is helmed by president and owner Louis Arvai, with son Greg Arvai serving as vice-president.

Launched in 1984, IECS is a local success story. Louis Arvai recalls that Slaats’ CBM cement in West Lorne purchased, among other things, the forms to create or manufacture, cement and wire erosion control nets, along with patio stones’ forms, from a man in Ridgetown.

CBM’s chief focus was the making and delivery of cement. Harry Slaats and Charlie Chase assumed ownership of these forms and began making and selling erosion control pads.

Arvai soon joined them, and became a business partner with Chase, a partnership that lasted for 27 years. The company moved to Rodney in 2008, and to its current site where the Walterscheid plant used to be.

Jeremy Slaats (Harry and Joanne’s son) is now production manager and is also the longest serving employee, having worked for IECS for 14 years.

Roughly 15 members of the staff work in the offices, while the rest work in production.

IECS creates many products of vastly differing sizes and complexity, but their initial product, and still the mainstay of the business, is providing support for the infrastructure of areas where water can create problems by eroding soil, roads and land. Concrete blocks, interconnected with steel cable and joined together to form a 16-by-eight block grid, totalling 70 blocks, is called a “mat”. It’s heavy and durable enough to secure soil, sand, roadways and more, from the ravages of weather and running water.

The mat is the foundation on which the company’s group of products has been created. Those include storm management ponds, a feature of every new subdivision in every growing municipality, lined with the mats; and precast headwalls in ponds, with a volume of 16,000 cubic metres of concrete. Farmers install them at crossings in creeks to prevent the erosion that the crossing of cattle and their hooves would create at the fords in the waterway. Cattle can destroy creek banks, and the mats preserve this valuable terrain. In the past manure holding slabs were also produced, to control another aspect of having large numbers of cattle on your premises.

CSA-approved, the plant is audited for two days, twice per year, and the plant tests four or five loads a day to ensure quality, safety, and consistency of the mats.

On the day the writer visited the enterprise, loads of mats were being shipped out to north of Peterborough, and White River, for a bridge near North Bay.

Erosion control maps have been shipped from the factory to the United States, following a restructuring, where Charlie Chase took over the U.S. market, while Louis Arvai’s focus remained the Canadian and international markets.

Soil and erosion control, securing channels and rivers, remain key component of their market.

In Canada, most of the product remains in Ontario, while Quebec and Alberta are other key destinations. Subdivisions of the company include trucking and ready-mix, for the making and transport of the products.

The largest IECS project to date the production of the pre-cast concrete components for Metrolinks in Toronto. Metrolinks is an Ontario government-funded project for commercial trains, CN and GO Trains. They have used 175 units from the West Lorne facility, each weighing between 65 and 70 tonnes.

Looking to the future, IECS is now planning for a major project in Uganda.

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