Mining sector outcropping in North Bay.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: North Bay

Visitors to the Gateway City will be hard-pressed to find any mining headframes on the horizon, but the community is home to a collection of mining supply companies working on projects across Northern Ontario and as far away as the Northwest Territories and South America.

North Bay is more than an hour's drive away from any major mine operation, but this sector generates major employment and big bucks for the city, employing about 1,300 people (and about 2,000 indirectly) and generating annual earnings of $82 million.

About 65 North Bay businesses cater to the mining sector, including engineering firms such as J.S. Redpath, headframe builders Minesteel Fabricators, drill manufacturers like Boart Longyear and Atlas Copco. The cluster includes underground vehicle builders like Miller Technology, heavy-duty electricians such as Canelec Manufacturing and Development. The cluster continues with explosives experts such as Topex Inc. and ETI Canada Inc., as well as a bevy of machine shops, tool and parts makers, automated systems manufacturers, even marketing firms all make up what is known as the Blue Sky Economic Partnership mining cluster.

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The partnership pegs the city's mining supply industry producing an estimated $280 million in output annually. About $142 million of the $280 million represents the purchase of goods and services of which between $20 million and $30 million is dumped back into the local economy.

"We don't have any headframes here," says Rick Evans, North Bay's manager of economic development, "and there's pluses and minuses to that, but the companies we have provide engineered products and services to mining companies all outside of our region, whether it's Sudbury, Chile, or South Africa or South America.

Between 1991 and 1996, when North Bay experienced some drastic public-sector downsizing with 2,600 jobs disappearing at CFB North Bay, the city took a studied look at the cluster approach. It looked at what places like Moncton had done with respect to cluster technology and decided to embark upon a sectoral cluster strategy and looked around for any well-established sectors that would lend themselves to the cluster approach.

Before, the spirit of co-operation among mining companies was on an ad hoc basis, says Evans. On some occasions, such as when major buyers from Russia were in town, all the mining players came together.

The cluster approach brought some structure for mining suppliers to share...