By IAN ROSS
Darryl Lake’s dream of a Finlandia-style innovation park for the mining industry has come to full fruition.
Inspired by the technology centres he toured in the Scandinavian country in the early 1990s, the executive director of Sudbury’s NORCAT is eager to get shovels in the ground this fall for a new Innovation and Commercialization Park on the campus of Cambrian College.
His 20-year friendship with Fred Stanford, CVRD Inco’s Ontario president, has led to a partnership between the Sudbury miner and the Northern Centre for Advanced Technology (NORCAT) with a $2 million donation for the proposed expansion of the technology centre.
The Sept. 20 announcement was attended by Ontario Mining Association president Chris Hodgson and Rick Bartolucci, Sudbury MPP and Minister of Northern Development and Mines, whose government delivered a $1.5 million contribution for the innovation park in late August.
It’s the first major contribution of private money into the innovation park that should not only grow NORCAT’s physical capacity, but its intellectual one.
Over the years, NORCAT has created a residency program providing office and shop space for new business start-ups, and developed partnerships between Sudbury companies and the Canadian Space Agency and NASA on a deep drilling project in space.
But the highly successful technology centre has outgrown its relatively cramped 32,000-square-foot digs on Barrydowne Road.
The innovation park, to be located off Maley Drive in Sudbury’s east end, will feature a 40,000-square-foot building with business incubation space for new and growing small companies geared mainly to the mining industry.
Lake says the CVRD Inco donation is “recognition of (NORCAT) being a major player in one of the most fundamental industries that this country has:” its mining sector.
As well, he says it establishes NORCAT as national and global experts in economic development.
In the coming weeks and months, Lake expects more public and private investment announcements to come with the arrival in Sudbury of at least three heavyweight anchor tenants in the park, specializing in the manufacturing and mine-related industries.
“We’re expecting that the private sector will at least have equalled any government support.”
Lake says they are currently partnering with other companies and a Texas university in taking space technology and applying it underground.
NORCAT has nurtured a special relationship with Inco since the early 1980s with occupational health and safety training and ground control studies. Since 1998, NORCAT has handled all of Inco’s contractor safety orientation training.
Stanford was repeatedly lauded by Lake for his Day-One advocacy of NORCAT.
The two have known each other since 1985 when Stanford was manager at Sudbury’s Creighton Mine.
Lake says his long-time friend’s industry perspective helped shaped the direction of NORCAT during their many lunch meetings.
Stanford credited Lake and his group in building an “infectious enthusiasm” for helping small businesses get started.
“There’s a passion with Darryl that goes through the entire team.”
Stanford says NORCAT has a tremendous track record in commercializing new technologies for the mining, forestry and space industry.
“How can you not support that? It’s truly spectacular.”
Stanford says CVRD Inco is not directly benefiting from the innovation park with anything tangible just yet. But the possibility exists of partnering with new and more established companies that are expected to quickly fill up tenant space in the park.
‘It’s a community building organization,” says Stanford, that’s lead to the creation of 41 new companies and more than 1,000 jobs. “Many of those companies benefit the mining industry with a whole series of new technologies developed that have made our industry more efficient.”
The centre’s sod-turning is expected to take place as soon as site plan approval is granted by the City of Greater Sudbury.
Lake expects the undeveloped 12-acre site to be ready this fall with footings installed and part of the building’s shell complete before winter. An official opening is expected sometime in the spring of 2008, depending upon the availability of skilled labour.
Besides providing shop space, field testing sites and technical expertise, the intent is to create a complex of in-house support services for entrepreneurs seeking government tax credits, financing and marketing.
The centre will also serve as a safe haven for those with proprietary technologies.
“It’s a protected cloistered environment so you can spend your energy developing your products and your marketplace,” says Lake.?Though there’s a lengthy waiting list of companies vying to get in, says Lake, it’s a rigorous entry procedure. Successful applicants must follow a vetting process called Stage-Gate, an internationally approved product development model.
But once these companies graduate, Lake says, they will be much sought-after by investors, potential business partners and customers.
Laurentian Media president Michael Atkins, who emceed the ceremony, praised both Lake and Stanford, saying the centre will have a direct and long-lasting economic impact on Sudbury.
“It’s an extraordinary commitment. It’s very hard in Northern Ontario to launch anything approaching this and have half of that paid by the private sector.”
