Louis Hardy (company)
Louis Hardy S.A.S., or Hardy, is a St. Pierre-based family-owned company specializing in the import and distribution of hydrocarbons, based in Saint-Pierre, in the French archipelago of Saint Pierre and Miquelon in North America.
In 2007, Hardy imported nearly 25,000 tons of hydrocarbons to Saint Pierre and Miquelon.
History
Louis Honoré Hardy (1899–1976) founded the company in 1919. He then signed a partnership agreement with the Canadian company Imperial Oil, now a 69% subsidiary of the American multinational ExxonMobil, to supply Saint Pierre and Miquelon with 205-liter barrels.
In 1954, Louis Hardy, son of Louis Honoré Hardy, returned to the archipelago to work in the family business alongside his father. Despite his father's initial reluctance, he had the first large-capacity storage tank built in Saint-Pierre, with a capacity of 596 m3, in order to supply fuel to foreign ships.
In 1956, at the height of the fishing season, the family business proved to be an essential link in the cod fishing industry. It supplied fishermen with lubricating oil, gasoline, and diesel fuel from the refinery in Halifax, Nova Scotia. “The gas station of the Newfoundland Banks”, is how the Quebec daily Le Devoir described the archipelago in 1982. Hardy also supplies fuel to nearly 250 cars and trucks in Saint Pierre and Miquelon.
In 1974, Hardy became a public limited company (S.A.).
In 2007, Hardy acquired SPEG Oil, a Saint Pierre-based company that distributes gas (butane and propane) throughout the archipelago and operates a gas depot in Galantry. It was absorbed into the company in 2011.
See also
- Borders of Canada
- Collapse of the Atlantic northwest cod fishery