"We'd been so busy down south looking after our business down there we literally had no time to develop the Canadian market," company president and chief executive officer Mark Buller said in an interview. "Now we have the time to do that."

The saving grace for [Loewen] is that it makes wood doors and windows exclusively for the luxury homes market. John Ferris, the company's vice-president of sales and customer service, said wealthy homeowners and homebuyers haven't been affected by the credit crunch which sent the U.S. housing market into a tailspin. So they've continued to buy custom-built homes and to renovate existing properties.

Buller said that up until two months ago, Norcraft's Winnipeg plant was focused exclusively on producing components for its U.S. parent's five kitchen-cabinet plants in the United States. So when U.S. housing starts began to plummet this year -- they hit a 10-year low in July -- the Winnipeg plant was forced to scale back production and lay off some workers.