$12-Million Pipeline Links Partners

The strength of Québec's attractiveness as an investment destination is also linked to the diversity of its economy, notes E&B Data president Jean Matuszewski. That diversity has enabled some traditional sectors and emerging sectors to pick up the slack, despite world-wide downturns in foreign direct investment. He notes, as an example, that processing of petrochemical products is currently "gaining ground – after turning its wheels for 20 years."
        A quick scan of recent site investors reveals Québec's appeal is not limited to American players or to narrow industry lines. Investments by agri/food industry and prime metal manufacturing companies are booming. U.K.-based Shire Pharmaceuticals is building a $20-million global vaccine research center in Laval. Also in the works: a $20-million expansion by Applied Extrusion Technologies, Stryker Bertic Medical's $8-million expansion and U.S.-based Cargill's new $33-million meat processing plant in Chambly.
        The province's assets are just as diverse and impressive, and include strong transportation infrastructure and a bounty of resources. On the St. Lawrence River, a blend of both is attracting major multinationals to the Bécancour Waterfront Industrial Park, located halfway between Montréal and Québec City. This international industrial waterfront park already offers clients a deep-water port accessible year round, a reliable multi-source energy supply, almost unlimited availability of water for industrial processes and direct links with the major industrial regions of North America.
        In June, 2003, it inaugurated a new $9-million pipeline installation which will allow liquid cargo in vessels berthed in the port to be transferred to a tank farm and, from there, to linked industries.
        The first client linked to the terminal, Petresa Canada, is owned by Spain's largest privately-owned oil company and the Société générale de financement (SGF), a Québec agency that provides development capital in targeted industry sectors. Petresa is Canada's only manufacturer of a biodegradable compound – linear alkylbenzene or LAB – which is used, most notably, in the manufacture of liquid or powdered detergents. Petresa officials say that, by eliminating all essential trans-shipment involved in ground transportation, the installation will lower production costs, increase its competitiveness on the world market and cut truck and railcar shipments by 3,000 trips per year. And park chair and CEO Jean-Pierre Nepveu says the project will make his park even more competitive with ports on the east coast of the U.S. and help it woo new companies.
        The wooing is worth the effort: the 30 companies already established at the facility include major multinationals in the electrometallurgy and electrochemistry sectors. Together, they represent a combined major-plant investment of more than $2.2 billion. And, to date, their investments in the park have created about 2,800 directly-related industry jobs – and $730 million a year in regional spin-offs.