Employees at Napoleon Home Comfort in Oro-Medonte take a lot of pride in the products they make and now there's a new honour to boast about.

The BBQ and fireplace manufacturer has been recognized as one of the 50 best managed companies in Canada.

“From the management team right down to the bottom level associates we work really, really hard and it's nice to be recognized,” says senior vice-president Stephen Schroter.

He says it's a huge accomplishment for the company his father started in 1976 building wood stoves, which has grown to become the largest privately-owned company of its kind in North America.

“We're able now to go to market place and say we're one of the top 50 companies in Canada,” Schroter says. “It means a lot for customers dealing with us because they know we will have the proper systems in place.”

Two hundred and fifty Canadian-owned companies like Napoleon were evaluated on a number of factors including business strategy, customer service, a healthy bottom line and future growth.

This afternoon, company officials broke the good news to their employees. Many say it's well deserved. 

“They've kept hands-on through good times and bad times and never lost focus of the vision and not many companies can say they've done that,” says Steve Gauci, director of retail.

“It's been really interesting to see it grow and modernize and keeping up with technologies to meet the needs of our customers both present and looking into the future,” adds Bob Martin, manufacturing manager.  

And what the future will look like is already taking shape: construction for a new distribution facility in Oro-Medonte is almost done. The assembly line that builds furnaces is also expanding and will take over the old warehouse.

“As soon as we can free up some space we will be able to build up two new lines strictly for that, which will be new hires as well,” Schroter says.

And there will be plenty of work – about 200 new assembly and production jobs are being phased in over a five-year period. 

Napoleon plans to have its new distribution centre and added assembly lines up and running in July.