Co-owner InsulFibre Ltd. | Director of Saskatchewan
The TIAC board and Saskatchewan Insulation Contractors’ Association welcome Nick Mastromatteo, but he is hardly new to the industry. His company, Insul Fibre Ltd., was founded by his grandfather 59 years ago. It is now a third-generation company with Nick and his brother Matthew taking over from their father and uncle in 2019.
“I’ve been around mechanical insulation my whole life, Mastromatteo says. “If I didn’t get involved in the insulation industry, my father may have floated the idea of writing me out of the will.”
Joking aside, Mastromatteo likes the business aspect of the industry, having earned a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Alberta. He enjoys the challenges and opportunities that come with growing and expanding an already established company. But it’s even more than that:
“At its core, mechanical insulation is an ethical industry with the goal to increase energy efficiency and lower the carbon footprint in the lifespan of a construction project,” Mastromatteo says. “As the proper millennial that I am, this is important to me. It helps me sleep like a baby, unlike my peers that I graduated with who are pursuing careers in the high stakes world of investment banking.”
Officially, Mastromatteo is the managing director at Insul Fibre Ltd. but the company doesn’t typically use titles. Instead, decision making is a collaboration between the four staff members in the office. Mastromatteo is also the organization’s estimator, a task that usually gets pushed out to the weekend, apart from normal business activities during the week.
In 2023, the company expanded into Regina and the team was tasked with running the organization out of two cities. In November, project manager Jasyn Dergo joined the ownership group in exchange for relocating to Regina to set up the branch that will serve the Regina area and Southern Saskatchewan.
“This was an important accomplishment because it gave me an understanding of what it is like to establish a new organization from the ground up,” Mastromatteo says. “I also learned what a new company needs to do when they are first opening their doors.”
Considering his success in the industry, Mastromatteo’s natural next step was becoming involved at the association level. “For the longest time, the interests of Saskatchewan contractors have not been represented on the board of TIAC,” he says. “When Tristan reached out in the fall of last year to see if I was interested in joining the board, I jumped at the chance.”
Although Saskatchewan is a relatively small province, with a population of just 1.2 million, Mastromatteo believes it offers significant benefits to TIAC as a whole, starting with its crown corporations. Saskatchewan has one energy company and one power company, both owned by the Government of Saskatchewan. This facilitates lobbying and establishing the insulation industry as an avenue of cutting carbon emissions easier compared with other provinces.
“Once established in Saskatchewan, like with free universal health care, this can snowball into other provinces across the country,” he says.
Insul Fibre Ltd., has been a TIAC member since 2016, when the TIAC conference was held in Saskatoon. Mastromatteo first attended a TIAC Conference in 2017, in Toronto. He was back in 2018 and 2019 and will see the membership in St. John’s, Newfoundland, this August.
“My goal for the TIAC board is to establish mechanical insulation as a tool to combat climate change,” he says. “We need buy-in from all forms of government, most importantly from the provincial governments, since energy and electricity, under the constitution, is a provincial responsibility.
“If we can establish a network such that mechanical insulation received the same hype through the kinds of rebates that are received through more traditional means, I think that would be a big win for this board.”
Be sure to connect with Nick at the 62nd annual TIAC Conference August 21-24, in St. John’s. ▪
