By NICK STEWART
Continuing the company’s trend of growing two-fold every year, Porcupine Engineering is looking to double its current 2,000-square-foot space by moving to a new facility.
Located above the South Porcupine post office, the company has seen a 50 to 100 per cent increase in business and doubled revenues over the last year, leaving its 23 employees jostling for space.
“It’s a very nice location, and we’re close to Placer Dome and we’re close to the Xstrata Kidd Creek facility, so we’re in a nice spot, but we could do better,” says Brian Emblin, co-owner.
“We have a great landlord, but we’re bulging at the seams here.”
With an eye on a potential 4,000-square-foot facility in the area, the current face of Porcupine Engineering is a far cry from its 2004 origins. At the time, the company’s three owners engineers Brian Emblin, Mario Colantonio and Frank O’Donnell were working out of their basements after splitting off from a mutual employer to create their own firm.
By July 2005, the trio had moved into a 850-square-foot space at their current location, which they doubled to 1,700 square feet by mid-2006. That same year, the company won the Nova Award for New Business from the Timmins Chamber of Commerce.
Since then, the firm has obtained 300 square feet of additional space, spurred by strong interest from a variety of industries surrounding the Highway 11 corridor, stretching from Sudbury to Marathon to Kapuskasing.
With a focus on the mineral processing, mining, power as well as pulp and paper industries, the company has a client list which includes the likes of Grant Waferboard, Tembec, Ontario Power Generation, Kirkland Lake Power, Abitibi, and various mining companies.
They also perform work for contractors, who seek them out to assist them with larger projects.
“Let’s say, for example, that De Beers is doing some design-build contract work where they’ll go to a fair-sized contractor and say, ‘Design and build us this tank,’ and provide them with general information on its technical specifications,” Emblin says. “The contractor will then approach us, where we put a proposal to them, they put it to De Beers, and then we get the job done.”
Diversification is key to the company’s continued growth, he says, as it helps Porcupine Engineering to weather the cyclical nature of resource industries in the North.
For example, in the company’s first year, the pulp industry constituted up to 40 per cent of the work; now, mining and metallurgy are constituting the majority of its efforts.
“By diversifying, we hope to be able to ride different waves,” Emblin says. “We were impacted by the Grant Waferboard walkout, no doubt about it, but we were able to buffer that by seeing the mining and minerals sector taking off.”
Colantonio says the lack of skilled technical workers in Northern Ontario has helped provide more opportunities for the firm to expand. This acts as a double edge sword in that considerable company growth is being held back by a lack of potential employees. To that end, the firm hosts co-op opportunities for college students who were born and raised in Timmins in an effort to entice them to stay in the region, as people who are not from the immediate area are likely to travel south after gaining some experience.
In fact, having been born, raised and employed in the Timmins area, the three founders understand all too well the importance of staying in the area, Colantonio says.
“It’s not only about a strong quality of life but also about having developed a local clientele and trying to service them as best we can.”
