By NICK STEWART
A $2.5 million expansion at New Liskeard-based Wabi Iron and Steel Corp. will not only help to increase productivity and reduce costs, but will also allow for 100 new employees within five years.
“It should have a positive impact on the bottom line, and it should allow us to be more competitive with our off-shore competition,” says owner Peter Birnie.
“This is a significant step forward for this company, and it’s something that we believe in.”
The loan, negotiated with and delivered through the provincial government, will allow the 101-year-old company to automate some of the moulding processes at its 13-acre manufacturing and fabrication facility. This will boost productivity and potentially allow the company to produce as much as three or four times more parts.
In order to handle the increased volume, the company will add more than 100 employees to its current staff of 130 in three to five years, Birnie says.
The loan will also be used to allow the company to reduce its sand consumption from 4,000 tons a year to 400 tons. As a sand-cast foundry, Wabi Iron uses the material in a process Bernie compares to children pressing plastic moulds into sand at the beach. Instead, the company uses wooden moulds of various pieces of equipment, and metal is then poured into the impression within the sand.
After the metal has cooled, the sand is shaken off, processed, and unsalvageable material is then sent to the local landfill. With the purchase of a new Thermfire thermal sand reclamation system, however, Wabi Iron will be able to burn off many of the chemicals involved in the process, allowing the company to re-use much more of the sand.
Given that this special sand costs anwhere from $150 to $175 per ton to acquire, store and dispose of, the move stands to annually save the company a “substantial” amount of money, Birnie says. At a time where environmental concerns are also running rampant, he adds that the reduced stress of loading local landfills with sand is a secondary but still crucial benefit.
This expansion is part of Wabi’s ongoing efforts to take an international approach to sales rather than looking strictly to regional opportunities.
Currently, the company is doing business in 10 countries, including the United States, Ireland, Australia and China.
“A few years ago, we sat back and thought about we need for this company to be strong for the next 100 years,” Birnie says. “We know measures like this are capital intensive, but it helps to keep us dynamic and able to hold our own on the global stage. There’s no reason we can’t compete on the world markets.”
This expansion represents not only job security for existing workers, but also positive economic news for the region as a whole, according to John Gauvreau, Temiskaming Shores’ economic development officer.
“It’s a fabulous development, because those sort of (manufacturing) jobs have been hit fairly hard in recent years with a strong Canadian dollar and a pile of other things,” Gauvreau says. “You see that, and yet here’s a local company who’s still doing good and still continuing to upgrade when times are difficult. The fact that those jobs are now secure is great peace of mind for everyone.”
The current downturn in the forestry industry has made local residents cautious, with many workers hedging their typical spending habits, leading to fewer numbers of new trucks seen on city streets.
While he expects the light at the end of that particular tunnel to appear sooner rather than later, Gauvreau says local progress will continue to be driven by the kinds of private sector expansion activity underway at Wabi Iron.
However, to maintain this level of development and expansion, the city needs to be able to attract a greater number of qualified workers. To that end, he says officials are in the preliminary stages of considering the development of a potential Northern Ontario job fair, not unlike previous efforts to attract physicians to the region.
In an attempt to stem the tide of local workers who may be scooped up by the De Beers Victor Mine Project in 2008, Gauvreau says officials are also working on partnerships to offer bus or flight services to and from the Timmins departure point. In this way, individuals from Temiskaming Shores are more inclined to return in their downtime, thereby maximizing the chance they’ll spend their wages in the area.
Regardless of future plans, however, Gauvreau says he has reason to believe the region has well and truly “turned the corner” from its forestry woes. An upswing in construction activity, growing regional mining exploration projects and a number of unnamed expansion projects bode extremely well for the economic future, he says.
“Our economy is definitely growing,” Gauvreau says. “We’re looking to the future with quiet confidence.”
