In December of 2008 I travelled to Ottawa and Montreal. Louie D'Alesio, who is an important "behind the scenes factor" in the service we are able to give you at Merrill Dunes invited me to visit the Montreal PBL Distribution Center and the Procaps paintball factory. Louie has a great deal to do with paintballs arriving on time and in good condition. His brother, Nas, manages the transports that drop Procaps paint directly at Merrill Dunes, and the two brothers have been VERY helpful in keeping our operation running smoothly over the years.
Stephane Corbeil, the owner of Paintball Mirabel (www.paintballmirabel.com) also invited me to see one of the largest paintball fields in Canada. It is an amazing operation which often has 1000 players on site at one time on summer weekends.
The following photos were taken on the trip.
Lindsey and George outside the Procaps Montreal factory where Draxxus paintballs are manufactured. A very large proportion of North America's paintballs come out of this building.
Here we are looking one way down the main hall in the Procaps building at some of the 23 encapsulating machines in their air conditioned and "clean" environment. The operation is amazingly "clean" and organized!
Looking the other way down the hall we see more encapsulators and also Louie D'Alesio. Louie has worked with the two founders of PBL and Procaps for years and has seen the business grow from nothing to the major paintball force that both companies are today. Louie gave us a fabulous tour. Procaps wisely discourages photos of the inner workings of the operation but we had the priviledge of seeing everything that went on. Wow! Making top quality paintballs is not a simple job!
Here Lindsey stands in one of the Procaps warehouses, beside paintballs that will be shipped across the continent over the next few weeks.
A shot of the indoor field at Paintball Mirabel. Huge heaters shoot the air temperature in the plastic dome up to pleasant levels in a very short time.
There are two castles at Mirabel. This is the larger and is made from locally milled lumber. It is well worth looking at Mirabel's website. The www.TippmannChallenge.com site shows a scenerio battle filmed at Mirabel. The scale of the field is amazing. Also the features. But for those who have to live with Merrill Dunes, compare the pricing and the client flexibility and the service level - life isn't really totally terrible in backwoods Saskatoon! 3 million people live close to Paintball Mirabel. This allows running a business on a huge scale but for any one client, you only get to touch the goodies for a moment and only at specifically scheduled times. Again, living in a smaller center and being a face with a name, has a lot of benefits.
If you are familiar with Merrill Dunes you will see some "tracks" in this photo that look familiar. Our partial "tank" is a generic tracked carrier that was used for many applications. There are several complete units at the National War Museum in Ottawa. Here are two examples.
