Superior Propane Superior Chooses Superior City for Regional Office
By Scott A. Sumner
Thunder Bay Business
Superior Propane looked at a dozen cities across Western Canada before choosing Thunder Bay as the site for their new regional administration centre to serve all ofwestern Canada. We will have 35 jobs to start and grow to over 100. Thunder Bay has a great university and college
and we look forward to growing in the city. Thunder Bay with out a doubt stood out. stated John Gleason, President of Superior Propane.
The company was very straight forward in what they wanted and reat to work with.These jobs are not what we are used to in our economy and are a good fit. Our interim space offer in the Thunder Bay Hydro building was key in Superior Propane locating here. states Ed Schmidke Chair of Thunder Bay Community Economic Development Commission.
We are very happy to welcome the administrative office of Superior Propane. Another great day in Thunder Bay. smiles Lynn Peterson. We are setting up a sales and admin centre in which we will take all of the incoming calls from our customer base from Northern Ontario
to BC representing all the administrative and support functions. If you are a new customer and you call in we will help you gain an understanding of our service offerings or answer a question about your bill. It is more to serve our existing customer base and grow from that footprint, states John Gleason of Superior Propane. As we have existing infrastructure across Canada we are going to roll that infrastructure here over a period of time to Thunder Bay. We will also
grow the business so the combination will result in more jobs. We are in a growth mode especially in Western Canada.
Right now there are just over 1700 employees at Superior Propane and Thunder Bay will be a very important part of their operation in Western Canada. They have only one other sales and admin centre in Canada with the other centre in Dartmouth , Nova Scotia.
Superior Propane are looking for sales oriented people, collection skilled staff, admin and accounting people. Their salaries will range from $ 30,000 to $100,000. In sales volume Superior Propane does some $700 million annually with a cash position of $90 million.There are already 13 employees of Superior Propane in the city and the company felt Thunder Bay was the right size community with a strong employees field to draw from. Gleason stated the company wants to build a centre of excellence and strong base to serve some 100,000 customers in their western trade area. The new Superior Propane office will occupy the
6th floor of West Arthur Place.
This deal was done because of a number of reasons including real estate accomadation, Tbaytel and our temporary office space was absolutely key. They are in the Whalen building as a temporary location until their office is ready. Superior Propane did a pretty exhaustive
search of cities and it is a real compliment to get a national brand name locating here in Thunder Bay. There is the potential for more. notes Steve Demmings of the TBEDC.
