Thunder Bay Oil Sands Consortium Show Success
by Scott A. Sumner
Thunder Bay Business
Showcased in the yard of the Venshore Mechanical pipe facility on the corner of Highway 11-17 and the Twin City Crossroads was a shiny new fuel of loading module which was completly manufactured right here in Thunder Bay. The complexity and quality of the workmanship was readily evident by looking at the impressive finished product ready to be transported to it’s owner in Saskatchewan.
“ Today we are showcasing one of our mods we are building for a client in western Canada. It is a fuel off loading module used for the transfer of fuel from a refinery to a truck. You will take the fuel that is refined and this actually filters, meters and adds dye and send it to the truck for loading. This makes it a saleable product right to the pump,” said John Jurcick, President of Venshore Mechanical and Chairman of the TBOSC. “ This is the first of this kind we have been
involved in manufacturing. It is a proprietary design of the client and we built two of them with more possible depending on what their market looks like”
Venshore Mechanical was the general contractor on the job. They subcontracted work to Coastal Steel to supply the steel and Dingwells North America which fabricated all the structural steel. The Venshore forces fabricated all the piping and installed everything in the
structural frame. There were also many other Thunder Bay supplier companies f providing the pipe and fitting to the electrical tray and the paint supply. The unit costs about $500,000 and two units have been completed.
“ We are excited about this project because it showcases the quality of what Thunder Bay can do. It shows we can ship a 16 foot product down the highway. It is will be go by truck with a police escort to just outside of Regina.” said Jurcick, whose company is building a new 6,000 square feet building fabrication facility on the old Winston Hall property next to Bombardier. “ There were about 2000 man hours and it took two months to complete the unit.”
“ What is particularly gratifying about this project is it is concrete evidence that the idea of forming a marketing consortium, in this case the TBOSC, can accomplish things as group where it can’t be done individually. This is proof of the concept where the group got together pursued business opportunities, worked together to complete the project and is shipping a finished good to Western Canada. It demonstrates Thunder Bay can reach out to markets where it traditionally hasn’t been a player such as the oil sands or in some other parts of the world,” said Richard Pohler, Senior Manager of the CEDC in Thunder Bay. “ What we have learned from dealing with the customer is there has to be someone appointed as the general because they don’t want to deal with 5 to 10 companies. Someone here has to take the led to coordinate the project into one finished product so the customer can issue a POand make payment. “
“ It is a proven prototype. They fabricated these in Alberta for the last number of years and we were fortunate to land the contract here in Thunder Bay. It all come down to dollars and cents. As a new client you have to be able to prove yourself to show you can do it for the price we said we could. These are proven results we can and they will get a top quality product. We were extremely competitive especially given we are shipping and it is not cheap to do that. We beat out other fabricators that are around the corner from them in Regina.” said Jurcick.
