By Jeff Sanford
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan — January 5, 2016 — Talk about starting off the new year with a bang. Raj Kavia, the owner of CSN-Kavia Auto Body in Saskatoon, is getting set to move into a large and sophisticated new facility later this week. Before the big move, he took some time out to talk to Collision Repair magazine about the remarkable series of “firsts” that that the business has seen in recent months.
The Kavia team will be shutting down this Thursday to move into an impressive, brand-new facility (think Bluetooth-equipped speakers in the brand new spray booths). We’ll have pictures of the new and advanced facility once it is set up, so watch collisionrepairmag.com for that in the near future. During our conversation, Kavia explained how a series of events are coming together right now to take the business to the next level.
First off, this past August, the facility became the first CSN shop in Saskatchewan. The company joined up with CSN Collision Centres to offer clients the benefits that come with being part of a large national network.
“We are extremely happy and proud to have Raj Kavia and the team at CSN-Kavia Auto Body as part of the CSN family, and to be our first CSN location in Saskatchewan. We are excited to be a part of CSN-Kavia’s future as he moves into his new location and look forward to many years of continued success together,” says Larry French, VP of Sales & Marketing for CSN.
There are a couple of other first as well. The shop is also the first one in Saskatchewan to be certified as I-CAR Gold Class. Kavia says that getting that Gold status puts CSN-Kavia Auto Body out in front in terms of the ability to offer consistent, high-quality service in the province. Kavia was also pleased to mention that the shop is also the first in Saskatchewan to garner the Honda ProFirst certification. “There are a lot of things coming together for us right now,” says Raj. “It’s a really exciting time. We’re busy. But that’s good.”
Indeed, the shop will close down this Thursday so they can make the move to the brand new facility. Kavia designed it with the help of some PPG engineers. The new shop will be built on land that he bought in August of 2014. The builders managed to get the new space up in just nine months. “That’s a very aggressive schedule. But we got it done. It’s going to be all brand new equipment. I can’t wait to get in there,” he says.
Kavia says he expects the move to go relatively smoothly. After all, the company has moved a couple of times over its 32-year lifespan. There’s a lot of fascinating history to CSN-Kavia Auto Body. The business was originally started 45 years ago in Africa by Lalji Kavia. The Kavia family then moved to Europe for a while. In 1983, the family and the business moved to Canada and set up in Saskatoon in a small facility on 11th street. In 1986, the business moved again to a larger facility on Avenue B North, where the company began to specialize in auto body restoration services. In 2007, Kavia moved to a grand space in downtown Saskatoon on 1st Avenue North. Now, this week, they move into the brand new 21,000 sq. ft. facility with brand new equipment, including an air cleaner that replaces all the air in the facility every forty minutes.
The big move is scheduled for this Thursday. “I think we can be operational by Friday,” says Kavia. “We’ve done this before.”
Keep watching collisionrepairmag.com for a run-down on the sophisticated and advanced new equipment going into the space and news on the move.
