CARON TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS We started the year of with a bang by acquiring Ken Johnson Trucking in Langley, BC. This organization has an excellent reputation in the bulk transportation sector led for 25 years by Ken and Sherry Johnson. Ken has agreed to stay on as General Manager ensuring a stable environment during the transition of new ownership. Kevin Greene was parachuted into the organization to look after revamping and realigning the accounting department to mirror the financial reports with the other organizations in our group. Canadian operations had a significant bounce back year posting a 10% increase in sales. Staffing for the driver pool is and will remain to be our biggest challenge to maintain continued growth. I estimate empty seats cost us an additional 10% growth in sales this past year. We did not have to deal with fires and floods but we did have to deal with the start-up of the Site C Dam in the Fort St. John area. Considering this project is one of the largest capital projects in Canada right now it was expected to have some challenges and it did. Oh my!!! Happy to say that things are running much smoother now and we look forward to hauling thousands of loads of fly ash and cement over the coming years. The US operation has a new man at the wheel. Kelly Cordell based in Dallas, Texas took over as General Manager in March 2017. Kelly has a wealth of experience with start-ups in transportation servicing the oilfield sector. Increased activity levels and bigger market share attributed to the efforts of Kelly and his team have produced an amazing turn around in the past months. I am pleased to say that we have decided to add another 10 units in Texas to further enhance growth and profits south of the border. The outlook for 2017-2018 looks very promising for all of our companies. Should the initiatives to improve our driver hiring and retention results be successful, I’m confident we will be able to maintain continued growth. – Bruno Muller SALES: $117,100,000 CURRENT ASSETS: $23,900,000 TOTAL ASSETS: $120,600,000 Celebrations were in order this year as ClearTech reached the 40 year milestone of serving our customers in various industries and municipalities throughout Canada. Much about the world and much about the company changed over that time. What hasn’t changed is our passion and commitment both to serving the customer and to growing the company. ClearTech is maturing with age. As we mature we are getting better. I have heard it said that a smart company gets healthier every day and that a healthy company gets smarter every day…. ClearTech, in my opinion, is proof of this. We have become healthier because our processes are flowing better, moving smoother. Year after year we are finding ways to do more business with less people. Business is up, headcount is down, overall stress on the organization is under control. Doing more with less and doing it well is smart, it motivates us to keep looking for and implementing improvement. We have gotten smart when it comes to controlling costs. I am not talking cost reduction here, we know how to spend. Rather I am talking about being smart when it comes to where we spend and where we invest. We have been strategically investing in systems, equipment, and facilities rather than spending on errors, rework, and inefficiencies. We have been making good choices and spending wisely to ensure we have what we need to succeed. This has made us financially healthy and positions us to stay healthy as we take on the costs of building our large new operating facility in Edmonton. We have invested in and developed good people, good systems, good tools, and good processes. These efforts have been successful due to the input and effort from our people all over the company. Time and time again we are seeing effective collaboration, cooperation, commitment to improve, and enthusiasm. All signs of a smart and healthy organization. We are smarter and healthier then we were just a few short years ago. The proof is all around us as we execute our daily activities but the real evidence is in the results. ClearTech had a strong year with record earnings flowing to the bottom line. Working as a team our people are doing smart things right which bodes well for the health of the organization. We are fortunate for the team we have. - Randy Bracewell SALES: $121,531,621 CURRENT ASSETS: $20,489,302 TOTAL ASSETS: $43,536,923 CLEARTECH INDUSTRIES 13 12