A Welland, Ontario company is confident enough in its knowledge of northern winters that it's starting construction immediately of what will be a major manufacturing complex on the old Bethlehem Steel site.
Welded Tube wants to have a new plant up and running before July 1 and to do that, work has to start on the 109,000 square foot first phase of the project.
Eventually, nearly $50 million will go into phase one, with two more phases totaling an additional 60,000 square feet. At that point, Robert Pike says the company plans to have 121 workers.
Pike is the vice president and capital projects manager in charge of turning a vacant 45 acres in the Tecumseh Business Park into Welded Tube USA.
Pike says the plant will build pipe used to drill wells for hydraulic fracturing of natural gas.
"It's highly regulated, highly inspected and it's highly scrutinized from our end as far as the quality processes that it goes through before it goes to the customer."
Pike says a 5,000-foot well requires 125 lengths of the company's special pipe as a liner. Eventually the plant will turn out four lengths a minute.
