Master blaster.

• Author: Cowan, Liz
• Position: TEMISKAMING

When Jim Taylor was hired as a consultant in 2003 to take a look at Nordex Explosives, the Kirkland Lake-based manufacturer employed three people and had one pickup.

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"It was pretty much dormant."

Fast-forward 10 years and the company has a staff of 65, a fleet of 35 trucks and Taylor is president and CEO.

"Everything I learned about explosives was done here," said Taylor, whose background was in business administration."

The publicly traded company began in 1970 and it was fairly active up until the early 2000s, when the mining industry experienced a downturn. The board of directors was pondering whether the company was worth continuing.

"When we looked at the company back then, we determined that if it was going to be in the explosives business, it had to make some commitments that it was going to be able to supply a full line of products to the clients," said Taylor.

Up until then, it had manufactured some niche, specialized products, but didn't offer a full line of explosives products.

To move Nordex forward, it had to get to the point where it was manufacturing more products than it was distributing. After years of research, the company commissioned a new plant in 2009, which manufactures emulsion explosives. Currently it manufactures about 70 per cent of what it sells.

"It is also the only one in Canada that manufactures the small diameter stick powder, which everyone thinks is dynamite, but is actually emulsions," said Taylor. "Everyone else manufactures it elsewhere and imports it into Canada."

With the development of its own equipment to handle the explosives and load them underground, Nordex also trains the miners who use them. Having its own fleet of trucks also allows the company to react quickly to the needs of its clients when required.

"In addition to designing equipment for underground, we also spent a few years of development on a line of our own trucks which can carry and load the explosives in an open pit." Taylor said.

"That led us to a whole other side of the explosives industry outside of mining, such as...