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Cornwall and Kingston

Cornwall, on the border with New York State and within an hour's proximity from Ottawa and Montreal, finds itself in a period of transition. Cornwall has a strong tradition in textiles, chemicals and paper manufacturing, but some industry has left town, leaving utilities in great supply. The city is now attracting new manufacturers and assemblers, particularly in electronics and high-tech, with C-MAC and Sigma Point Technologies now clustering in the northeast end. The city offers plenty of low-priced, fully serviced industrial lands, low operating costs, and a telecom infrastructure that officials say they are constantly upgrading. Other additions to the manufacturing sector include Paper Source Converting Mills and Xactics and Glopac (plastics). C-MAC, an assembler of computer chips and boards recently opened in the old Levi Strauss building with 150 employees, representing quite a coup for the city.

Up the road in Kingston, Ont., a C$51 million addition is underway at the DuPont Canada fiber manufacturing plant. John McEwan, Business Director, Flooring Systems for DuPont Canada, says the added space is exclusively for its "bulked continuous filament [or BCF] nylon" manufacturing capability. McEwan says A 35-percent expansion will allow DuPont to make fibers for all four segments of the carpet-making industry -- residential, area rugs, commercial, and now automotive. To be completed by year's end, it's the third major expansion at the Kingston plant since 1995, for a total investment of C$156 million. The latest addition will accommodate a new production line with state-of-the-art equipment.

"The flooring industry grows 2 to 3 percent a year, and though that doesn't sound like much, it's such a big industry that 2 to 3 percent means you continually have to find new ways to produce quantities of fiber, and this expansion will permit us to do that," says McEwan. While other DuPont plants are also under expansion, McEwan says Kingston has "a reputation of being very successful in delivering project expansions on time, and on budget."

DuPont has said that expansions of its North American operations are in no way connected to the recent decision to cancel a proposed $600 million investment in its Asian-Pacific operations. McEwan explains that this is because the type of processes and manufacturing are vastly different, that "there really isn't an infrastructure in other parts of the world," and that shipping large industrial carpet across three-quarters of the planet would almost be nightmarish.

NOVA Chemicals in Sarnia-Lambton, in southwestern Ontario, is also expanding. A Canadian chemicals commodity company with 18 locations worldwide, NOVA says it's among the largest producers of styrene (a raw material of plastics used in toys and food packaging), as well as ethylene and polyethylene.

The company operates four plants in the region which employ 1,200 chemical engineers, technologists and hygienists, and has undergone a $$130 million technology upgrade, with hopes of expanding production by 60 percent.

"Because we've upgraded, we're concentrating this year on maximizing production at all of our facilities," says NOVA Chemicals' Joanne Brown, Communications Consultant, from her Sarnia office. "We had a good year last year, and we're certainly working on doing the same this year," adding that the upgrades mean NOVA can build upon its ability "to cost-effectively manufacture products to meet the needs of customers." Target styrene production over the next year is 950 million pounds.

"Manufacturing is a particular strength in the City of Kitchener," about an hour west of Toronto, says Kathy Bissell, Manager of Business Development. (In fact, the greater region of Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge and Guelph claims one-third of all auto-parts companies in the province.) Machinery, transportation equipment, and metal fabrication are significant sectors, says Bissell, with electrical and electronic manufacturing close behind.

Thunder Bay and the Boreal forest region offer spruce, balsam, fir, pine, aspen, maple, poplar, birch, tamarack and cedar. With four pulp & paper mills in the region, Creighton says Thunder Bay is the largest producer of forest products east of British Columbia, with a total of 7 million cubic meters (247 million cu. ft.) of wood fiber every year, approximately 4,500 direct and 10,000 indirect local jobs accounting for an estimated C$2.3 billion in annual manufacturing output. "One-sixth of all forests products in Canada come out of our area." The area is Ontario's largest lumber producer, and boasts over 150 small and medium-sized forestry-related businesses.