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April 2015
| Business World
119
game - you’ve got to be lean, you’ve got to
operate efficiently and effectively in every-
thing you do.”
GROWING PAINS
Servicing a nationally and well-recognized
set of companies within the industry from
the United States to Eastern Canada,
Charleston Aluminum has dealt with its
share of adversity since they began 15 years
ago. And while they are now entrenched
within the aerospace industry, Ray detailed
his path with the company.
“I was getting ready to move to DC and take
a job up there,” he said. “Owner Willie Port-
noy said ‘oh no, you need to come talk to me’,
so I came to talk to him and the next day he
hired me to be his VP of finance.”
“My mission was to bring world class finance
and accounting to a company that grew 20%
a year for the first six years of its life and was
suffering some growing pains,” Ray contin-
ued. “It was a big challenge because when I
got here in 2010, a lot of these people have
already been here for 10 years and they have
been doing things a certain way so we had
to rebuild processes and it was a little bit of
a struggle, but we were able to bring world
class accounting to Charleston Aluminum.”
Following the departure of Blakeney, Ray’s
title changed to COO and his responsibili-
ties multiplied ten-fold. Charged with over-
seeing a variety of aspects within the compa-
ny – from safety and warehouse operations
to customer service and human resources,
Ray has become an invaluable asset to the
rise at Charleston Aluminum.
“There’s just no room for waste or inefficient-
ly in the company, it’ll kill you,” Ray said.
“Our biggest challenge right now is finding
additional customers and building the base
we have. A couple years ago we decided that
we wanted to feature some stuff in aerospace
and we wanted to do that and we’ve been
very successful with that.”
“Charleston Aluminum is a good company
and it’s on the verge of becoming a great
company, Ray continued. “So we’re trying
to maintain that momentum to push us for-
ward.”