One of the Sudbury's development officers is being credited for convincing Cliffs Natural Resources to place its coveted ferrochrome furnaces in the city.
City councillor Dave Kilgour said Paul Reid, a business development officer with the City of Greater Sudbury, was instrumental in convincing Cliffs that the suburb of Capreol was the best place to site the smelter.
The Ohio miner was on a site selection tour of potential Northern Ontario sites in early 2010 and arrived in Sudbury to look for a brownfield site.
“They were on a search across the province for a suitable site, and one of the areas they wanted to look at was in Sudbury,” Kilgour told the Northern Life newspaper. Reid and city staff showed the company one site that Cliffs frowned upon because of its small land package and proximity to a residential area.
Reid dug into his memory bank and suggested the former Moose Mountain mine site, north of Capreol, might to do the trick.
With a former rail bed close to the Canadian National Railway main line and adequate power transmission nearby, Cliffs ended up buying the property last year from Sudbury businessman Bruno Gervais.
“They (Cliffs) wanted a brownfield, they wanted it near rail, they needed hydro and they needed it to be away from built-up areas,” said Kilgour.
Kilgour praised Reid for knowing the area so well to come up with the Capreol site off the top of his head.
“I think that shows the importance of having staff with a corporate memory. Somebody new probably wouldn't have been able to do that.”
Kilgour said Cliffs was so impressed with Capreol, the company made the site their preferred 'base case' site against other sites in Greenstone, Thunder Bay and Timmins. Cliffs finally made its choice official on May 2.
The $1.8-billion smelter will create 450 jobs.
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