Actlabs To Thunder Bay In A Big Way
by Scott A. Sumner
Thunder Bay Business
There were smiles all around at a media conference to announce the opening of a new assay lab in the old Moffat Hangar at the Aviation Centre of Excellence ofConfederation College. Activation Laboraties Ltd. has purchased the 35,000 square foot building which was replaced by the new Aviation Centre of Excellence right on the Thunder Bay Airport runway area.
Actlabs will spend some $1.2 million on the project and create 60 full time jobs in the process to serve the growing mining sector of Northwestern Ontario. Currently Actlabs have about 450 employees in their company which has other office locations in Canada, Peru,
Australia, Greenland, Venezuela, Chile, Mongolia and shortly Sweden.
“ We were familiar with Thunder Bay and the region and knew a lot of companies that are here from doing work for them down in our main facility in Ancaster. We thought it was more feasible to bring our laboratory closer to where the companies are doing their physical
exploration to give them better turnaround and get their results in a timely manner,” noted Dr Eric Hofman, President of Activation Laboratories. “For a lot of the mineral exploration companies they don’t want to ship their samples because of the cost of shipping and
delay. Ideally we want to be as close to where the exploration is occurring.”
“Our renovations are still ongoing on the new building location. We moved in two weeks ago and wanted to get our sample preparation up and running quickly. Most of our analytical equipment will arrive in April because there is long delivery times with some items coming from Australia and Canada,” stated Hoffman. “We will have 60 full time employees, some will become labourers say crushing samples as well as others chemists, chemical technicians and others.”
Prior to starting this company Dr Hoffman worked for Inco from Atikokan to the James Bay lowlands. He has his PHD in geochemistry from the University of Toronto, and bachelors and masters degrees from McGill. “ When I was doing my PHD thesis I had to develop a method of
platinum metal analysis actually looking at three of Incos mines- two in Sudbury and one in Thompson. When I finished my PHD I realized I could commercialize what I had developed and we did that in a joint venture with a commercial assay firm and McMaster University running
out of McMaster until I decided to start my own company,” smiled Hoffman. “ We have the highest technology approach in the mining industry. For example we do neutron activation which is basically using a nuclear reactor for some of the testing which is why we are
located in Hamilton near a nuclear reactor. We use high resolution laser ablation techniques one of few in the world. We hit the rock samples with a laser, vaporize it and put that into a mass spectromator. This can detect mineralization below swamps by taking surface samples.”
