Riddled with debt and threatened with bankruptcy, a major player in Quebec’s pharmaceutical industry could cause the public treasury to lose millions of dollars.
SiliCycle occupies a prominent building in the Technological Park of Metropolitan Quebec. And yet, under the protection of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act for a little over a week, the company of nearly 200 employees has just informed its creditors of its intention to make them a proposal.
According to preliminary documents filed with the Superior Court of Quebec, the company faces debts totaling $39.5M, including $29.43M in guaranteed debts.
Of this total, $13.6M is owed to the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), $7.2M to the Royal Bank (RBC) and at least $5.26M to Investissement Québec (IQ), the financial arm of the government of Quebec.
Rapid growth
Founded in 1995 by two young graduates (Hugo St-Laurent and Luc Fortier) from Laval University, the company specializes in the development, production and marketing of silica-based products, mainly intended for pharmaceutical industry.
In happier times, in 2020, Hugo St Laurent, president of SiliCycle (center), Yves Dubé, director of business development (left), and Pierre Plante, vice-president of operations PurCann Pharma (right, all just behind Mr. St-Laurent), in the cannabis production factory.
Photo Simon Clark
Over the years, the company grew at lightning speed, then chose to diversify. In 2022, in an interview at Soleilthe company was pleased to have been involved in the development of subsidiaries.
Among them: Total Océan, in the Magdalen Islands, Aku Nature, in Mashteuiatsh, and PurCann Pharma, in cannabis, which ended up buying the remains of Neptune Solutions Bien-Être, in Sherbrooke.
CEO replaced
Contacted on Friday, SiliCycle management was unable to respond to interview requests from Journal. But in a letter to creditors, which we were able to consult, management admits that its diversification was “too rapid” and that the pharmaceutical industry’s shift towards biological products had “significant repercussions” on its sales and liquidity. .
SiliCyle also announces that its co-founder, Hugo St-Laurent, has left his position and that Raif Kadri, former vice-president of sales of PurCann, now occupies the position of president and CEO of the group.
Courtesy; taken from the Silcycle Facebook page
In September, Hugo St-Laurent registered with the Registry of Lobbyists of the Office of the Lobbying Commissioner of Canada with the objective, we read, of obtaining “a contract, other than as part of a call for tenders public, subsidy or other financial benefit, or […] of another form of benefit determined by government regulation.”
In 2018, SiliCycle received financial assistance of $7.85M from IQ. More recently, in May 2023, Quebec invested $2M in Pharma in silicaanother of its subsidiaries.
A “recovery plan” must be presented to creditors in the coming weeks, under the supervision of trustee Étienne Fiset, of Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton.
With the collaboration of Philippe Langlois, Investigation Office
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