Expansion leads to opportunities: local manufacturer maps out strategy to tap into world markets.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: Timmins: Special Report - NorFab Metal and Machine - Brief Article

Times may tough in the mining and forestry industry, but that does not mean NorFab Metal and Machine plans to dig in and ride out the down cycle. The Porcupine-based machine shop and mining equipment manufacturer demonstrated considerable faith in its expertise and in the eventual rebound of the metals market by expanding into a new 20,000-square-foot facility and has devised a strategy to export their product line and knowledge on a national and worldwide scale.

"We never sit idle;" says production manager Dan Katic, "we are always doing something."

Since moving a few kilometres down Highway 101 into a new and expanded shop in December 2000, general manager Walter DiTullio says they "haven't looked back."

Though the bulk of their work revolves around custom equipment fabrication jobs for Kidd Creek, Kinross and Grant Forest Products, NorFab offers its own product line in shaft and underground hardware.

The 25-employee outfit designs, builds and reconditions mining locomotives, personnel and utility carriers, ore cars, ballast cars and dump cars.

"We needed a bigger facility to try and widen our market with our product line," says DiTullio, who co-founded the company in 1993 with Katic, and launched the business in 1994.

"Rail equipment for underground mining is our biggest product line," says Katic.

"We've developed that over the years, and we want to keep expanding on that" by making export inroads into the states and abroad, says DiTuillo.

Katic describes the company's eight-year run as having grown in "leaps and bounds" from the more modest days when they started with five employees.

Sales have since "skyrocketed" from that first year, with the company topping more than $4 million in sales last year.

"We're not just a backyard outfit," says Katic. "We bought every bit of equipment we need to do our work and we're still buying."

With the move, and the $700,000-investment, they purchased better equipment and installed a 330-tonne press brake, which bends steel plate into different shapes for ore chutes and hoppers.

They also added two overhead cranes with a combined 22.5-tonne capacity to handle some of the bigger jobs.

"The mining industry has pretty well gone with open-pit mining, which requires very large-scale equipment," says DiTullio.

"So we just basically scaled up everything to handle the market," adds Katic.

Though it has been a rough couple of years for the mineral and natural resources sector, both say there is still money to...