WELLAND – Barry Kramble’s dream will soon become reality.
Great Lakes Biodiesel, a company that is said will become the largest producer of fuel derived primarily from domestically-produced vegetable oils, is now only months away from being operational in the former MJ Jones plant in Dain City.
“It’s been several years of planning and approvals, and now it’s in the development and completion stages and it’s exciting to see it come to fruition,” said Kramble, the company’s chief executive officer, in an interview from his Toronto office.
Initially calling itself Bioversel, the company that will produce about 170 million litres of biofuel annually when its doors open in September or October has now reached the point that it’s starting to hire staff to work there.
Working with Job Gym, Kramble said the company hopes to recruit 20 to 25 people from Niagara. Help wanted ads will be published in today’s newspaper, and likely again in July.
“We appreciate the Job Gym’s expertise and familiarity with the local employment market, and we are partnering with them as far as the recruitment is concerned,” he said.
While there are no other biodiesel plants in the area, Kramble said he’s not concerned about finding people with the experience needed to work at the plant.
“From what we’ve seen so far, the experience and the quality of applicants has been extremely high as far as being able to do process operations and working in a processing plant,” he said. “It’s processing equipment, so anyone who’s worked in an industrial environment with machinery and processing equipment could easily transfer their skills from what they did before to these positions.”
Salary and benefits being offered to successful job applicants, he said, will be competitive with wages offered by companies needing people with similar qualifications.
“At this point, we’re happy to take on qualified people from the area and hopefully put them back to work when we start up this fall,” he said.
Additional employees may be required soon after that, he said.
“Depending on the scale up of production and as we see how things are going there maybe some additional positions that we will bring on staff,” he said.
Kramble said the new company has already created jobs for many people working to revamp a former trucking warehouse into a biodiesel plant. Most of those people are from the Welland area.
“We have anywhere between 65 and 100 construction positions during peak times working on the plant,” he said. “We have people working both on site as well as off site. There are some local sub-trades from Welland that are doing fabrication in their facilities which then will be delivered to our plant for installation.”
In total, he said there are about 100,000 man hours of work required to create the biodiesel plant.
“It provides continuity to the construction industry, as well as skilled trades and welders, electricians and engineers, equipment operators that are all part of putting this plant together.”
Kramble said his company made a conscious decision to hire local contractors whenever possible, including Timbro Design/Build Contractor.
“The preference is to look locally, and to date we’ve tried to bring in groups that have the skills and experience that can do a job and come locally,” he said. “We’re definitely trying to work with all local suppliers and trades.”
Although plans for the plant were initially met with concerns from neighbouring Dain city residents, Kramble said the company has been working with Ward 6 Couns. Jim Larouche and Bob Wright, as well as economic development officer Dan Degazio, to mitigate any issues that have been raised.
“We appreciate peoples’ interest and concerns, and certainly their concerns are addressed through the city building department and fire department. We’re working very closely with both those departments through all phases of the project,” he said. “What may have been a concern at the onset is being addressed through the regular development process.”
Source: Welland Tribune