Activation Laboratories Expands Across Northern Ontario And Creates Jobs!
by Scott A. Sumner
www.thunderbaybusiness.ca
Activation Laboratories will expand its mineral analysis services across Northern Ontario. This will create about 80 permanent jobs in the North.
Through the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation (NOHFC), the company will expand its Thunder Bay location to offer more mineral sampling services. This helps assess and manage mineral quality. They will also build two new facilities in Timmins and Red Lake, which will
be equipped to perform sampling analysis, giving the mining industry more access to these services.
This initiative is part of the province’s Open Ontario plan to create economic opportunities and jobs in Northern Ontario.
QUOTES
"The NOHFC’s Enterprises North Program is one of several programs supporting job growth in Northern Ontario. It helps business and industry expand and create new opportunities throughout the North."
— Michael Gravelle, Minister of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry and Chair of the NOHFC.
"Our investment in this critical service to the mineral exploration sector is helping to strengthen a key ore sampling analyses provider and bringing new highly skilled jobs to the North."
— Bill Mauro, MPP for Thunder Bay/Atikokan.
"The expansion of our Thunder Bay facility and the establishment of sample preparation labs in Timmins and Red Lake will complement our existing Northern Ontario facilities in Greenstone and Dryden and help us meet the demand for additional assay lab facilities with top of the
line analytical capabilities from our vibrant mining exploration sector."
— Dr. Eric Hoffman, President, Activation Laboratories Ltd.
QUICK FACTS
1 • The NOHFC is providing $1 million to this project under its Enterprises North Job Creation Program.
1 • The Actlabs group of companies provides contract analytical services covering all aspects of analysis from academic research applications to routine quality control functions.
Some Additional Thoughts From Officials at the Event
Minister Michael Gravelle
“ I am pleased to announce $1 million to Act Labs to expand Thunder Bay and establish laboratories in Timmins and Red Lake. It is timely with the current state of exploration here in the north. This truly is indicative of the growth of mineral exploration in Northern Ontario. In
2010 we were over $800 million and $950 million in mineral exploration in 2011.”
Dr. Eric Hoffman
“ Our loyal customers and dedicated employees helped make this possible. One of the factors helping us to decide on expanding in Northern Ontario is the NOHFC. We are bringing new technology to Northern Ontario. We leverage this technology with our experience and
allow us to provide immediate services. These expansions will help us serve our customers better and help speed up turnaround time for them and at a lower cost. It helps create a more vibrant economy. We anticipate more expansion in Thunder Bay due to the requirements of our
clients. We are proud to support the mineral industry in Northern Ontario and believe there will be new mines develop here in the upcoming years.”
Bill Mauro, MPP
“ We keep telling people Thunder Bay and NW Ontario is going relatively well and with our assistance this company will hire more people. It is extremely exciting and clearly the mines are coming here.
We have good programs in place to help the companies coming here including with electricity costs.”
Harold Wilson, President Thunder Bay Chamber of Commerce
“ We are expanding in Thunder Bay right now with companies like Act Labs and Porter Airlines offering more flights per day. This is upfront stuff happening right now with exploration, it is not even the actual mine development work yet which will be even more intense.”
Ryan Mackie, Regional Manager of Northern Ontario, Actlabs.
“ We have 4 buildings in Thunder now with 75 employees right now and anticipating another 40 to 50 coming in the next year .We started three years ago here with 4 people in one building. Our staff range in education from entry level to PHD educations.Actlabs has had an excellent response from the mineral sector and maintained a good report with their needs.”
“ We have a new 300,000 square foot building under construction in Southern Ontario. Our whole company has around 800 employees and are in every continent except Antarctica. We have been approached to go to many other countries. Our reputation is to be more innovative and we have state of the art technology. Some of our instruments are over $300,000 each and we have 7 or 8 of them.We are about 4th or 5th in the world in term of company size in our field.”
