September was a busy month for Atlas Copco general manager Jeff Hagar.
Management at the North Bay mining supplier were preparing to head to the Las Vegas Mine Expo to showcase their wares, while simultaneously getting ready for a new factory opening and all the media interviews that go with that.
The global mining supply giant has more than doubled its manufacturing space with a new 94,000-square-foot plant on a 12-acre site on Ferris Drive.
The new building is the workplace for 130 blue collar and administrative positions transferred over from their cramped 40,000-square-foot McKeown Avenue shop. The move made during May and June will boost their production of exploration products by 25 per cent.
The new factory will make drill rods, core barrels and diamond drill bits. About 20,000-square-feet is set aside for production of their Swellex rock bolts, originally developed in Austria.
The new place is a highly secure pass-card facility which houses plenty of proprietary technology. It's a fully automated plant with robotic welders installed and most modern of heating treating equipment.
For the Sept. 19 open house, Hagar was expecting area politicians, heads of local business and officials from local post-secondary institutions, along with visitors from Atlas Copco's head office in Sweden,
"They're going to see Atlas Copco has made a significant announcement in the mining industry in Canada and in business in North Bay."
What was especially gratifying for him was the expected attendance by 40 customers from across Canada, the U.S., Brazil and Peru.
"That's a great testimony to the employees and the product that we make."
Hagar says head office's decision to site the Swellex line in North Bay was because of its good workforce, productive employees and an already successful manufacturing operation.
The local Swellex production is specifically geared toward supplying their North American customers including Diavik, De Beers and Agnico-Eagle.
The company has has been a fixture in North Bay since buying JKS Boyles 10 years ago. Some product assembly operations will remain behind on McKeown.
The business and marketplace has grown to the point where 60 per cent of the products made in North Bay are exported to exploration drillers like Major, Cabo and Kluane.
Plans are to use that space to continue to grow out the business. Should the need arise, Hagar says the building is designed to expand by 20,000 square feet on both ends.
"This project has been an interesting one for North Bay."
The building was a design-build-lease back through a partnership with the ORE Development Corp, part of the Minneapolis-based Opus Group, one of the largest property developers in the U.S. "It's a different business concept for Northern Ontario and I think it's more common for other big cities in North America."
For Atlas Copco, the building represents an investment of more than $15 million in the value of the lease payments and the production capacity inside.
With a signed 15-year lease, Hagar says the company decided to concentrate its effort on production and catering to customers, rather than deal with real estate issues.
Despite the blip in the financial markets, Hagar says there's a surplus of demand over supply so the mining industry will remain healthy for a few years to come.
Hagar says North Bay's location at the intersection of two major Northern highways between the mining towns of Sudbury, Timmins-Kirkland Lake and western Quebec plays a big part in the growth of more than 60 mining-related service companies.
Typically, the service industry can't pay the wage scale that the big miners do, so they've historically been located farther away from the mining camps.
"Over time you can recruit employees that understand the mining industry and the market, the demands of the customers and they have built up a knowledge of the products that they use," says Hagar, who like many in the industry, always struggles to find top quality machinists and mechanical engineering talent.
"The mines always get the first dibs on key talent."
Atlas Copco's new digs are part of ongoing expansion of many local mining suppliers, some of whom have clustered in the Ferris Drive industrial park in the city's south-east corner, next to Highway 11.
Mining builders Cementation Canada have outgrown their administrative space on Graham Drive and plan to consolidate their downtown engineering office into a new 30,000-square-foot complex at a site yet to be made public.
Last year, they completed a 10,000-square-foot shop on Booth Road in the industrial park to accomodate their refurbishing of hoists and raise bore equipment.
Goodyear Canada has expanded and is moving its retread shop from Gormanville Road to a 19-acre property down the street from Atlas Copco, where the tire maker is building an 80,000-square-foot facility. The 50-employee company retreads a wide range of tires for the construction, mining and forestry industries and ships them across Canada.
Across town, Sandvik Mining and Construction purchased a 70,000-square-foot building from local mining supplier from J.N. Precise for its growing exploration drilling division.
The 70-employee plant makes core barrel, drill rods and other in-hole products for clients worldwide.
