A North Bay mining supplier will be making huge inroads on Western Canadian ice roads this winter after landing contracts to supply ventilation ducting to two mining operations.
Production is underway this month at Schauenburg Industries to fulfill orders on two separate contracts to an undisclosed diamond mine in the Yukon and a gold operation in northern Saskatchewan. The two contracts are worth a combined $1 million in sales.
Managing director Don Croteau called it a “major success story” that should boost the national profile of the 22-employee company and increase its awareness among mining companies in the West.
After securing the contracts in mid-December, the company was under a tight eight-week window to manufacture and deliver the company’s product to logistic staging yards in Saskatoon and Edmonton by mid-February in preparation for shipment over the ice roads to the remote locations.
To meet the deadline, the company has recently hired 24 temporary employees to bolster their complement of 15 skilled production employees and has added a third shift.
“It all had to happen very quickly. Within two weeks we had to ramp up,” said Croteau.
The company is moving out 80,000 feet of flexible layflat ventilation ducting of 25- and 50-foot lengths in diameters of 42, 48 and 52 inches.
The first shipment rolled out of the 23,000-square-foot Bond Street shop on a tractor trailer between Christmas and New Year’s, with more loads to follow. “As we manufacture it, we ship it.”
Due to the challenging times in Ontario’s stagnant mining sector, many of the new workforce additions had been laid off from other suppliers in the North Bay area.
Croteau said, fortunately for his company, it’s a great opportunity to audition some of the temps for future permanent employment.
“We’re probably one of the few businesses in North Bay that are expanding right now.”
Croteau extended praise to all his employees, giving special attention to sales manager Daniel Mainville and operations manager Elizabeth Fournier for putting together and carrying out the job.
In a statement, Mainville said working on the tender “was quite challenging and needed a lot of number crunching before submitting the final copy” when factoring in all the shipping metrics, timetable and product part numbers.
Fournier added “orders of this magnitude are rare in northeastern Ontario” but the company’s workforce appears “very engaged” to meet the ice road deadline as production has ramped up “threefold.”
Schauenburg has been in the underground mining business since 1969, making a soft flexible ducting and more rigid fiberglass product. The company, which is a subsidiary of the Schauenburg Group of Germany, also makes dog agility tunnels.
Since taking the job five years ago, Croteau said their business approach has changed beyond catering exclusively to the Ontario mining sector, even if it means shipping by truck across Canada to distant mine sites.
“My philosophy is we’re looking for new business out west and if it is lower margins at least we’re getting a piece of the pie.”
Croteau said the company had shipped product to this burgeoning region before, but sales were relatively small.
“We’ve always been around but we’ve never really looked for business out there. Customers found us on the web and asked for pricing.”
Schauenburg is determined to growing that presence as part of a fledgling regional distributorship of Northern Ontario mining suppliers ? D3 Mining Solutions based in Saskatoon ? that includes Sudbury’s Jannetec Technologies and Maslack Supply, and Porcupine Canvas of Timmins.
Croteau said though these recent deals were not secured through D3 ? but had been cooking for a few months ? being part of that distributorship bodes well for future opportunities.
Breaking into the Western resource sector can be difficult for Eastern firms because of regional favouritism, but Croteau said some miners will open up the bidding process to outside suppliers when it comes to bottom line pricing.
“At the end of the day if they can save some money they kind of forget about that.”
