The Billion Dollar Triangle THE MARKETING OF SUDBURY

Fortunately, the community’s movers and shakers felt otherwise. Under the supervision of Regional Chairman Tom Davies, a strategic action plan was initiated. Diversification was the key to the plan, turning a region sustained by base metal mining into a services hub for northern Ontario. Governmental services, tourism, medicine, financial services, and mining technology and manufacturing were targeted as growth opportunities.

The drive to diversify, abetted by the metal miners’ return to robust financial health, has met with some success. Three chartered banks have set up corporate banking centres in Sudbury to serve northern Ontario. A $25-million cancer treatment centre is being erected, as are two new buildings (with a total price tag of $50 million) to provide office space for government workers with the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines, the Ontario Geological Survey and the Mining Health and Safety Branch of the Ministry of Labor. All three are in the midst of moving to Sudbury from Toronto. In tourism, the exhibits of Science North draw hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, turning what was once merely hurried pit stops for gas and lunch into 2- or 3-day stays.

It was precisely for that reason that Gasco Mining Equipment moved from North Bay. Several years ago, Gasco relocated in Sudbury, hoping to find a ready welcome from the big Inco and Falconbridge mines. That didn’t happen. Gasco’s pneumatic jacklegs and stopers couldn’t compete against the hydraulic jumbos and blasthole drills that the big nickel miners required. But, said Gasco Chief Executive Officer Herb Stanley, the company found it was just a little closer to its real market — the narrow vein mines of northwestern Quebec and the Timmins area.

Proximity to major mines also has influenced Marcotte Mining Machinery Services, said Paul Marcotte, vice-president of this maker of utility vehicles. “We’re not too far from Hemlo, Timmins and Quebec,” he said. “For many of the mines, we can service our customers within an hour or so. You’ve got to be able to service your customers that way today.”

So the remodelling of the Sudbury economy is coming along quite nicely. However, the makers and suppliers of mining equipment shouldn’t be overlooked. In 1981, 60 companies were building and selling mining equipment. Many of those were wounded, if not killed off during the recession. (We know of one company that had a pre-recession employment roster of 40 workers, only to be left with three or four employees in the depth of that mighty downturn.) But this sector now has 80 firms. By all accounts, the list continues to grow. And, more importantly, Sudbury is beginning to draw more manufacturers of mining equipment. That’s not surprising. Sudbury is only a stone’s throw away from central Canada’s biggest and most enduring mines — the nickel producers of the Sudbury Basin itself. Additionally, it is a relatively short truck haul away from the Elliot Lake uranium mines, the Hemlo gold fields and Wawa, the Timmins area mines, and all of northwestern Quebec.

Of course, ever since the railroaders in the late 1800s cut through surface showings of nickel- and copper- bearing norite, Sudbury has had a contingent of industrial concerns servicing the underground and surface operations of the mines. But only after the recession this decade were concerted efforts made to lure manufacturers. Among new manufacturers, a bigger player is Continuous Mining Systems. It was set up as an Inco subsidiary in 1984. The CMS mandate is to develop commercially the ideas born in Inco’s underground test labs. Annual sales have surpassed $20 million and, more significantly, slightly less than 10% of revenues come from international exports. “We’re try ing to establish a good home base first,” CMS President Dale Letts says.

As for the increasing number of mining manufacturing concerns, Letts says, “before, most of the companies serving mining were geared to the service side, selling parts and making repairs to mining equipment. Now the manufacturing is evolving.” Still in its infancy, the manufacturing sector will take another three decades or so to fully evolve, Letts estimates.

Local manufacturers also mean local innovation. N. E. Smethurst, regional manager for Cubex Ltd., a Winnipeg manufacturing firm with a strong presence in Sudbury, agrees that new mining technology commonly was imported before. “That is beginning to change,” he says. Today, if it isn’t a Canadian company tinkering with new ways of mining and selling it, it’s a foreign-based multinational doing it on Canadian soil.

Case in point: Boart Canada. At its Sudbury plant, noted for hydraulics expertise, Boart manufactured 2- boom electric-hydraulic jumbos that were sold to Japan. Companies like Boart and Normet and Tamrock and CMS and a host of others are in Sudbury because that’s where the action is. “The mining companies want suppliers and manufacturers close by. If the equipment companies are elsewhere, they’re a little out of touch. Geography has become a critical factor,” says Smethurst.

For a city that once faced economic oblivion, Sudbury has come a long way in a short time.

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