SASKATOON — A major mining equipment manufacturer is expanding its footprint in Saskatchewan, with provincial officials and company representatives breaking ground Monday on a new Sandvik facility that will create 30 skilled jobs and bring key manufacturing work home from overseas.
The Saskatoon plant will centralize mechanical cutting, parts, service and aftermarket support, strengthening the province’s role as a hub for mining across Central and Western Canada, says the provincial government in a news release.
Legislative Secretary Responsible for Trade and Export Development, Jamie Martens, joined Sandvik on behalf of Minister Warren Kaeding to break ground on the new mining equipment manufacturing and servicing facility in Saskatoon. The facility will bring mechanical cutting, parts, services and aftermarket support under one roof to drive efficiency in the mining sector across Central and Western Canada, says the ministry.
The facility is expected to be operational later this year and will create approximately 30 new skilled labour positions for mechanical cutting, assembly, service and maintenance of products. This work has historically been done overseas. Sandvik is a multinational engineering and equipment manufacturer operating across 150 countries.
"Building on the momentum of our recent Sudbury announcement, this facility is about expanding capability and readiness," Sandvik Mining Vice President of Sales Area Canada Peter Corcoran said. "The Saskatoon facility will strengthen our local presence in a key mining region and ensure we have the capacity, infrastructure and expertise to support our customers well into the future."
Corcoran said the $51 million price tag is coming straight from Sandvik. The participation of the federal and provincial governments in regards to finding opportunities for training.
"They are going to help us get some training capacity in the future with some money for education."
About the plant itself, he said, "We'll have a training and development centre inside the new building, and our aim is there to educate the new miners on the new technology … which is very, very technical and specialized, and it will need extra curriculum training on that. And that's where we want to partner with some of the colleges, local colleges and communities as well."
Corcoran said they are planning on a 51,000 square foot plan, the majority of which will be workshop space.
"We already have 100 employees in Saskatoon today," said Corcoran. "We manufacture goods here already. We have 60 people working at our ground support facility where we make the ground support products for the potash, uranium, gold and copper mines today."
He said they expect that within the next 24 months, 30 new jobs will be created.
Describing some of the equipment used in the potash industry, Thomas Vallant, president of the mechanical cutting division, said they have developed a lot of unique equipment designed specifically for Saskatchewan's conditions. They first started providing mechanical cutting equipment to Saskatchewan in 2008, with the first set being a prototype.
"We had to test it for a few years," he said, "actually in a salt mine in Germany with similar mining conditions compared to Canada."
The machine he referred to is a 270-ton machine with more than one megawatt of cutting power, powered by 4,160 volts of electrical power.
"And the special thing about this machine," said Vallant, "is that it's not just a cutting machine, but we also have developed together with the customer here a haulage system right behind the machine so that we can continuously transport the material away from the machine."
Regarding the location of the new plant, he said, "Here in Saskatoon there is the necessary infrastructure available that we need, because we will need the support from other local suppliers on machining, and we need service technicians that can travel to and from the workshop every day. So it's the close proximity to the mines which is the main reason why we're here."
He said, "You have to mine the potash wherever God put it, and this is the biggest deposit in the world, in Saskatchewan."
Saskatchewan is home to 27 of the 34 critical minerals that Canada has identified as strategically important for the country and demand for those minerals is expected to increase significantly over the coming decades.
