Winter weather leads to small delay for stick plant

Summer season is well on its way and the worldwide demand for popsicle sticks is about to explode.

Tennessean import Earl Metcalf is itching to fill that void, though construction delays means his first deliveries won’t start until the end of June or early July at the earliest. T hat’s months beyond the February deadline he set last fall when he first announced he was moving his Global Sticks plant from China to Thunder Bay.

"I think it’s just Murphy playing along," said Metcalf, the Global Sticks general manager, blaming the infamous lawmaker for the delays in establishing the $7-million plant.

"When you have construction in the wintertime it takes more time and it slows down."

The 60,000-sq. ft. facility, located off West Arthur Street in Oliver-Paipoonge, is expected to employ between 80 and 100 people when fully operational.

There’s been no shortage of applicants looking to end their stay on the unemployment rolls, he added.

"We have hundreds of resumes at Lakehead Employment. We’re going to sort through those and start calling people to come to work at the end of June. The first group will be about 25 or 30. Then the next group will be the next month," he said.

"We can’t train them all at one time."

It’ll be mostly on-the-job training, Metcalf said, due to the uniqueness of the equipment in the region. He’s not overly concerned about the learning curve, saying the area’s skilled labour force is one of the main reasons he chose Oliver-Paipoonge over a number of other North American options.

A ready supply of white birch and the improved Canadian dollar were also forces that brought Metcalf to the Northern Ontario community, after nine years in the Far East.

"We went to China to compete, and we did reasonably well with it. It’s only been in the past two years that it’s become not so nice in China. The cost of raw materials has gone up tremendously. You’ve got export duties added to your product, VAT taxes, and you’ve got the high cost of transportation," Metcalf said.

"It gets higher every day with the cost of oil. So it’s more economical to come to Thunder Bay."

The province also kicked in $1 million as well as an additional $3.8 million in loans and loan guarantees through the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation and the forest Metcalf confident it’s money well spent.

"We’ll be successful in Thunder Bay, and I venture to say in another five to seven years we’ll be shipping ice cream sticks to China," he said.

The company will also produce a line of paint-stirring sticks and sticks for corn dogs. In total about 2.9 billion sticks will be produced annually.