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TOWNSHIP DEPARTMENT INFORMATION TOWNSHIP DEPARTMENT INFORMATION 20 Zorra Now | Spring 2025 Zorra Now | Spring 2025 21 As a boy growing up on a small rural property in the Netherlands, John Van Lierop had a keen ear for large farmmachinery rolling into fields in the neighbourhood. He would hop on his bicycle and pedal towards the sounds of planting, spreading or harvesting. It wasn’t long before Van Lierop – having moved across the Atlantic Ocean to begin a career (or, more accurately, several careers) and a family – that youngsters were being inspired by machines that he and his wife Carmen helped bring to North America through the Zorra Township-based Sunova Implement Ltd. Sunova’s headquarters are housed inside the former Wildwood Park Public School on Oxford Road 119 between Uniondale and Medina, with other aspects of the ever-changing business occupying spaces within the school and in additional buildings that have been added to the complex since the couple purchased the property in 1998. Interviewed recently, John notes the company began its life working out of a nearby farm that the couple – who met in 1992 and married in 1995 – had purchased close to Carmen’s parents, the Pelkmans. Van Lierop remembers thinking at the time that the school’s gym was huge and should suit them very well for many years as a workshop but it wasn’t long before they needed to build a new workshop because the gym soon became too small for their purposes. (The gym is now a parts room.) A new shop was built, followed by a fabric- covered building for displaying equipment. Then came an expansion to the fabric-covered building and an expansion to the workshop. And when the rapid success of one of their business lines required expanded sales and design teams, they added one and then a second portable office building to the rear of the former school. The most recent addition to the Sunova complex was a paint booth about 10 years ago. They had been painting the Veenhuis dump trailers that they continue to assemble and market on the farm down the road. But a labour ministry inspector showed up one day and determined the farm location was unsuitable. Building the paint booth “was probably something we should have done sooner,” Van Lierop admitted. Veenhuis has been the longest-standing line of business for Sunova, having originated way back when harvesters that became a branding what customers described as “Sunovatized forage choppers.” In the early 2000’s “There was one time we had 24 (John Deere and New Holland) choppers on display in the yard,” he noted. “I remember getting lifted up in the bucket of the payloader so I could take a picture.” The North American farm equipment companies weren’t yet up with the trend of Kemper rotary corn heads, Van Lierop explained, and “we kind of filled the gap for a number of years.” But a family-run, single-site business serving as farm equipment distributor for an entire continent isn’t a model that’s favoured widely in the industry. On more than one occasion, Sunova helped introduce Canadian farmers to European innovations and followed up with highly respectable sales numbers, only to eventually have the European parent company – the OEM, or “original equipment manufacturer” as they’re referred to – decide to terminate the relationship and opt for more conventional strategies. Van Lierop is matter-of-fact about the fact Sunova no longer sells CleanFix reversible fans that once pushed the Sunova employee base to its highest level of 28 thanks to the need for on-site manufacturing and sales, or the Claas choppers that once dominated the business’s roadside display spaces and interior assembly and service bays. “Everything fell into place, I guess. It was the right timing. The demand (for self-propelled forage harvesters) was building and there was a need for a dealer in southwestern Ontario.” Globally, Claas has a vertical integration strategy to set up corporate stores throughout North America. “In the end, for Sunova this Claas strategy did not line up with our core business strategy and/or beliefs,” Van Lierop explained. But he stresses that his company’s loss of the contract after 16 years – several of those years leading SPFH (Self Propelled Forage Harvester) sales in Canada – is just how business is done. And because Sunova built such a strong reputation selling and servicing the light green-coloured European brand, the Wildwood shop – and Sunova employee Jack Hutton – is kept busy year-round repairing and servicing the machines. In 2025, Veenhuis trailers and the home-grown Broadcaster pumping control systems dominate Sunova’s business. Veenhuis components are brought in from Holland and meticulously welded and assembled, the paint booth is equipped with a computerized painting unit supplied by Veenhuis, and Sunova has long been recognized as the place to go in Ontario for the highly-regarded dump wagons. Zorra farmequipment company is well-respected across Ontario Childhood fascination became a life-long career for Sunova’s John Van Lierop By Stew Slater Van Lierop’s company was building a reputation for bringing Kemper corn headers over from Europe. Other successes through the years for Sunova have been several years as the North American distributor of CleanFix engine cooling fan systems (including some manufactured on site), several years as the leading Canadian dealer of Claas self-propelled forage harvesters, and the continuing business of the home-designed and home-assembled Broadcaster remote pumping system controllers. Van Lierop says one key to the company’s success has been his regular trips to Germany’s massive farm trade show, AgriTechnica, as well as other European locations to scout innovations that aren’t yet here in North America but might be a good fit for North American farmers. He recalls the early 2000s “was when people really started to get interested in the self- propelled forage harvester. I would go to Europe and look at 20-to-30 choppers in a week, take photos, come home and get the film developed and go through this whole checklist about what I liked about this one and what I didn’t like. Then I’d call the guy back in Europe and say, ‘I want to buy this one, this one and this one’.” The chopper business at Sunova began with them bringing components over from Europe – much as they continue to do with the Veenhuis dump wagons – and assembling them. That’s how the Kemper chopper head business began. With Sunova’s tradespeople rebuilding mainly John Deere 5000 and 6000 series forage “The interesting thing is that, out of all those agreements with those companies, most of them were these long contracts with a whole lot of pages. And Veenhuis was the only one that was a handshake deal. And it’s still like that today.” The Broadcaster systems, meanwhile, were developed after John Van Lierop saw his father-in-law Carl Pelkmans atop a platform working to control a manure pump. Wouldn’t it be great, he thought, if that operation could happen remotely? The units that he and his team subsequently created are now in use not only in manure management but also in manufacturing, the oil and gas industry, and even in Hawaii where they control dredging pumps. Van Lierop admits, though, that he finds it challenging to make sales talks outside the agricultural realm. “I’m an ag guy. That’s how I talk.” Indeed, that’s the circle he has moved in since first coming to Canada as a teenager in 1988, on a working visa, to a dairy farm near Thunder Bay. “It was pretty clear within a week that I wanted to stay in Canada,” he recalled. When his visa expired he returned to the Netherlands but was soon back, this time working in tobacco near Delhi. He recalls boarding a school bus with dozens of other Dutch kids at the airport, then being picked up at the German Hall in town and driven to the farm in the bed of an open-backed pick- up truck. He remains friends with all of the families for which he worked over the years. Following another return to Europe, he came back to stay – first settling in a rented home in Youngsville Corners near Embro and working as a stainless steel welder during the installation of Boumatic milking parlours as well as setting up his own business custom round baling. In the very early mornings, he would wake and make calls to Europe inquiring about equipment opportunities – a practice that soon led to a deal to represent Kemper in North America. “What I learned from that, I think, is that if you really focus on something, it doesn’t take long before things start to line up,” he commented.