Labour and skill gaps, suitable land availability are challenges listed in city’s latest mining readiness strategy
Thunder Bay is out to build its brand as a mining supply hub.
Four years after tabling its first Mining Readiness Strategy, the Thunder Bay Community Economic Development Commission (CEDC) revealed the findings from an updated version last month, informed by a survey of industry stakeholders last year.
Northwestern Ontario has always been a precious and base minerals grocery store to the world. Much of the activity surrounding that sector has always flowed, many times sight unseen, through Thunder Bay.
Following the crash of the region’s forestry economy in the mid-2000s, local industrial suppliers and service companies retooled and transferred their skill-set over to the mining and exploration companies.
Seeing the opportunity to diversify the local economy, the CEDC jumped on the bandwagon in opening lines of communication between procurement managers at the mines and the Thunder Bay business community.
Today, the CEDC remains intent on maximizing and expanding those spinoff benefits by promoting local and Indigenous vendors with the launch of a new mining service and supply directory, listing more than 400 companies along with targeted marketing campaigns, like Join the Boom, promoting Thunder Bay as a regional supply hub.
Jamie Taylor, the commission’s CEO, said her staff has done plenty of outreach and networking to encourage industrial suppliers in Sudbury, Timmins and beyond to consider opening a branch shop in northwestern Ontario.
If a conveyor belt tears at a mining operation, the CEDC gladly points out it’ll take less time to order and hustle a replacement up to the site from a fabricator in Thunder Bay than it is to knit a new one in Sudbury.
“We’re really trying to stress that,” said Taylor. “A lot of companies need servicing or