Fishing for customers and accounts is another metier in Halifax. New Jersey-based Creditek, which manages receivables for large corporations, recently announced it would be hiring more than 100 financial and accounting employees over the next year. It's the first offshore service center for the company, and Creditek President and CEO Regina Paolillo says, "we couldn't be happier with the results."
      But while Halifax draws more companies because of more population, other towns have their own pull. Convergys is growing in Cornwallis, Lightbridge in Liverpool, both occupying properties originally built for Service Zone (a company whose holdings were acquired in January 2004 by Nashville-based ClientLogic). The Cape Breton area is holding its own too, buoyed by small-town locations involving big-name companies.
      EDS Canada will add up to 325 people to its regional payroll of more than 1,500 in Port Hawkesbury, part of the company's "Best Shore" strategy for its global operations. The company first established itself in the province with a center in Sydney. By agreement with with Nova Scotia Business Inc., EDS will receive a five-year payroll rebate and is eligible to receive a maximum of US$1.5 million, provided the company creates and maintains 325 positions by the end of the agreement.
      The same terms apply to the new project from Magna International supplier Millennium Precision Machining, a US$9.7-million, 90,000-sq.-ft. (8,361-sq.-m.) plant in North Sydney's North Side Industrial Park that will operate under the name Cape Breton Castings Inc. (CBCI). It will serve a Tesma plant that's been there since 1987 -- an oddity in a national automotive economy that is almost exclusively in Ontario. The new plant will employ 90 people when it's up and running in the summer of 2004.
      Dr. Syed Naqvi, president of CBCI, spoke to Site Selection from Millennium Precision Casting's offices in Mississauga, Ontario. He says the location next door to Tesma is a result of the industry trend toward closer congruity of precision machining and casting operations -- in many cases under the same roof.
      "In working together we can eliminate a lot of process and production issues," he says. "For us it meant guaranteed business and for them it meant saving on transportation costs."
      Naqvi hopes a phase two for the project may attract additional customers. He has an eye on the aerospace potential for his business, but, he says, "normally, in our business, we don't mix automotive with aerospace. The customer doesn't appreciate it, nor is it practical to do both things at the same site." But as is the case for many northern suppliers, the U.S. South beckons.
      "We are trying to have some initial exploratory discussions with Alabama and Mississippi, applying the same logic of trying to go near our customers," he says. The company has a plant in Mississauga and another in St. Catherine's, near Niagara Falls, to serve General Motors. The company also works with U.S. parts suppliers Dayco and Mark IV, which operate U.S. plants in Arkansas, Indiana and Tennessee.
      Meanwhile, across Canada, the word is out, and some Cape Bretoners who went to Ontario to work in the industry years ago are aching to get back to their scenic home territory.