 
The renewed health of the mining industry is reviving the fortunes of Sudbury's Mining Technologies International Inc. (MTI) not only in its home town, but also in Billings, Mont., where a big expansion is driving big business.
With 33,000 square feet of shop space, five acres of storage, a showroom and a plum location literally on Main Street, MTI has inhabited a renovated former Volvo dealership since May 2009.
Business has been so brisk through its new location that the company has had to raise its Billings-area staff to 30, hiring purchasers, buyers and representatives for its parts desk.
They've even gone so far as to fly out five Sudbury employees on a short-term basis to help ensure the orders continue to move out the door at the company's United States hub.
"It's rosy for us," says Rob Lipic, general manager of MTI's capital division. "We're seeing a turnaround in the confidence in mining and people are getting back to business. We've been very fortunate to have a good relationships with our customers and we're there to support them through these tough times, so that's been really successful for us."
Lipic describes MTI's former Billings location as a "small, sort of obscure industrial area, and we certainly weren't proud to put our sign on the side of it." It served as MTI's home in Billings for the last decade.
From there, the company primarily handled parts sales as well as minor rebuilding and reconditioning of MTI products for the Stillwater Mining Company.
Due to lack of space, most parts were held at a warehouse on site at the nearby platinum-group metals Stillwater Mine, meaning the company could not readily service other customers.
However, the new location has room for expanded on-site work and hosts the company's new dynamometer, a tool that tests rebuilt powertrain components and allows MTI's Billings location to be a certified rebuild facility.
The space now means the rest of MTI's customers and dealers in the western United States can be handled through the new site and MTI avoids having to ship parts to Sudbury to be rebuilt.
This is an important factor for the company, particularly as its primary local customer, Stillwater Mining, has responded to the recession by purchasing more storage and rebuilding services from MTI and fewer new parts.
"Although they did have a recessionary drop probably worse than in some areas, just the fact that we're partners with them and we work closely with them has allowed us to maintain a lot of our business levels."
The sizeable site will also rent space to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, which will handle all the training for the western U.S. through that location.
This means all the miners from the region must pass through MTI's offices to be trained under a program "similar to NORCAT, but much more intensive," where every miner must be certified before going to work.
"Certainly, it's nice having the miners coming through our plant and seeing our equipment and seeing how it's rebuilt and the quality that goes into it before they go to work."
This broadened focus allows MTI to move into other markets such as construction and tunnelling for the coal industry.
This continued diversification continues to float the company's fortunes, not only in the region, but also in Sudbury, where a slight recession-driven drop in staffing levels has since been remedied: a dozen people have been added to engineering, sales, and production during the summer.
"No one likes to see a slowdown at all, but certainly what was going on before this was extraordinary and getting back to normal levels of business is giving us some time to take a deep breath and focus on the important things."
www.MTI.ca 
