Local Company Opens Brand New State of the Art Facility in Thunder Bay
by Scott A. Sumner
www.thunderbaybusiness.ca
Right next to the sprawling Bombardier plant in Thunder Bay is the brand new home to Thunder Bay’s Venshore Mechanical. This highly technical firm that does work with complete pipe jobs across North America has just moved into a new 18,000 square foot facility situated on almost 6 acres with state of the art equipment.“We supplied $1 million of financial assistance through the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund which is always great. When a private sector group steps up and makes an investment in a community, puts their own skin in the game as I like to say, it is really nice to help and allow them to compete internationally. It is 20 new jobs and some of those are for young people. We are happy to be a part of it. The total cost is $ 2.8 million for building and equipment so that is great sign. We have private sector people investing in our community which is a very strong and important signal.” said Bill Mauro, MPP Thunder Bay Atikokan.
“It is a fantastic location and I couldn’t be happier about the property coming up for sale and being able to purchase it. It is a large area and a lot of the fixtures that we build are large so we need a lot of yard space. The building is 35 feet in height to the tip of the roof and the cranes run with a 25 foot underhook meaning we can put a truck in and off load the highest load of the truck without doing it with mobile equipment outside,” said John Jurcik, President of Venshore. “We were operating at Twin City Crossroads in a rented building before but this is more efficient. We thought that building would work but after we were there the handling of equipment was difficult. We needed to move to survive. Without the
NOHFC funding the project wouldn’t have happened. I needed that financial backing from them and for them to buy into our idea, our vision. They believe in Thunder Bay like I do. “
“I have to have confidence in Thunder Bay. If we don’t look outside the area for our work we might as well close up shop and move out to Alberta like everyone else did but I’m not there. I love Thunder Bay and I want it to work.” said Jurcik.
Venshore has 19 people on staff currently but that can fluctuate up to 36 people working two shifts. The staff are UA affiliated trades that are highly skilled and paid. “I would love to see more work for the plant. Right now we are pretty well flat out until February or March of 2011. I would like to see what happens after that. I had customers say you build the plant and I’ll give you the work. They are now impressed 100 % with our plant. Our equipment is purpose built and purpose bought for the production that we are doing,” said Jurcik. “Right now most of our work is from the Sault Ste Marie area and we have a number of clients in the Edmonton area.
Our work can be sourced from anywhere, it doesn’t really matter. We do very little work for Thunder Bay- over 90% is from outside. If the dollar is gaining we can compete. We could build a plant in Alberta but it doesn’t help the people here. People have roots here- family, homes
and camps they don’t want to leave in Thunder Bay. This plant will make us more competitive. We still have a pretty good nucleus of people in the field that have stayed here and a large pool to draw from for expansion.”
