Mining supplier gives new life to Montreal manufacturing plant

Metso Minerals, one of the world’s larger suppliers of equipment to the mining industry, is pleased to announce that it will now be improving its delivery to the Canadian market because of its recent acquisition of a manufacturing plant in Montreal.

Metso recently bought GE Energy’s Lachine Main Plant, a heavy fabrication and machining facility with about 25 000 m2 of heavy manufacturing space featuring CNC machine tools and some of the world’s larger horizontal and vertical machining centres supported by very high-capacity overhead crane services.

Jeffery Loenard, Senior Vicepresident, Comminution, Mining, told Canadian Mining Journal that the new plant is already operational. “We have some machining projects that started within days of our acquisition. We’re working on some large mill heads and doing some welding for existing contracts.”

Actual fabrication is expected to achieve full capacity by the end of the first quarter of 2009. There is already a skilled workforce in place and Metso says it will keep and retain about 170 GE Energy employees. A further 50 personnel will be hired before the end of the first quarter of 2009.