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C E L E B R AT I N G 50 YEARS IN FERGUS Officials: keys to longevity include quality workforce, technology, adaptation JAIME MYSLIK
PICTURED RIGHT: CAMERON MATTHEW PLANT MANAGER
OWNERSHIP HISTORY Canada Wire and Cable (owned by Noranda Metal Industries) and Essex Wire bought the 60-acre plant site in Fergus in July of 1965 as a joint venture. The facility was called Fergus Cables Limited and construction cost about $5 million. “It actually started out basically as an automotive plant, so small cables that ran at basically high speeds and then over the years the business developed into more of
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When I started here the biggest reels we handled were 36 inches and the aisles were 16 feet wide. Today we handle hundred-inch reels and the aisles are about half that width, so we have really built the plant within the walls.
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FERGUS - As the Nexans Canada Inc. plant in Fergus marks its 50th anniversary, it celebrates not only the operational milestone, but also its success at remaining relevant and competitive in an ever-changing market. Though changes to the plant may not be obvious from the outside, apart from last year’s 225,000 square foot warehouse and outdoor storage expansion, the inside is continuously updated. Vice-president of commercial operations Murray Darroch started working at the plant 48 years ago, just two years after it opened. “When I started here the biggest reels we handled were 36 inches and the aisles were 16 feet wide,” he said. “Today we handle hundredinch reels and the aisles are about half that width, so we have really built the plant within the walls.” The same goes for the plant’s workforce. Production started in August 1966 with 15 people, and just one year later that number had grown to 160 employees. Now the Fergus facility employs about 220 people. As new technology is developed to make production more efficient, the workforce remains stable. “The amount of people within the plant really hasn’t changed over the years,” Darroch said. “So the number of people hasn’t changed, but the amount of production has changed dramatically.”
MURRAY DARROCH - VP COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS what it is today ... an industrial and commercial aspect and moved away from the automotive industry,” Darroch explained. The plant produced its first piece of wire on Aug. 6, 1966, the same day as the Fergus Scottish Festival and Highland Games in Fergus. In 1968 Canada Wire and Cable bought out Essex Wire and in 1969 the plant became Canwirco Ltd. By 1971 the Fergus plant again changed names, becoming the nucleus of Canada Wires’ Construction Products Division. In 1991 Noranda sold Canada Wire to Alcatel Cable S.A., creating Alcatel Canada Wire. In 2001 Alcatel separated its Alcatel Cables and Components business into its own publicly traded company, named Nexans, a standalone publicly-traded company (on the Paris stock exchange) focusing on energy and communications cables. Now the Fergus plant is part of the global network of the Francebased Nexans, focusing primarily on low voltage residential, commercial and industrial cables. WORKFORCE Despite numerous ownership changes, officials say the plant has always stayed true to its workforce. “The plant opened in ’66 and then the spring of ’69 they were negotiating their very first contract
and there was a strike at that point,” Darroch explained. “I can’t remember the exact amount of time, it was a reasonably long strike.” That’s the only strike the plant has seen in its 50 years. “That’s actually something we’re sort of proud of,” said plant manager Cameron Matthew. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union 636 represents approximately 190 production staff at the plant today. Officials say the company has looked out for its employees when the global economy has taken a downturn. “In the early ‘90s there was job sharing around here,” Matthew said. “It was before I got to the plant.” Darroch explained that in the mid 1980s and early 1990s there were periods when employees worked three- and four-day weeks, on work share programs. “It was a work share program that the government sponsored so you employed your people, you never laid your people off,” Darroch said. “You had them work so many days a week and ... like they were on unemployment, the government would pick up part of their two days even though they weren’t working, but it was more economical for the government to do that than to have people laid off and they’d be paying them full time.” Darroch explained it was a gov-
ernment incentive that many factories benefitted from at the time. “It was a way that we could keep all of our people employed and that goes back to ... why we have such good people,” he said. “They were looked after, they look after us and it’s been a good relationship for those years because of those things.” More recently, when the economy slowed down about 10 years ago, the company was able to prevent layoffs by having current employees paint the entire plant an idea that Matthew came up with himself. “Things had dropped and we made a decision to keep everyone and we knew things would turn around and we wanted to keep our people,” Matthew said. The decision helped keep a comfortable relationship between management and plant employees. “Cameron was talking at one of his quarterly communication meetings with the employees and he mentioned to them that it had cost a million dollars to paint the plant, that was the cost to the company to keep everybody employed,” Darroch said. “One of the guys put his hand up and asked, ‘Do you need a second coat?’” Matthew said that one of the good things about the plant is that everybody is comfortable with everybody.
“You don’t sit in your office and people don’t sit on the floor and everyone works together,” he said. “Everyone knows each other.” The plant has a number of third generation Nexans employees and possibly one or two fourth generation employees. “When the facility was started all of the employees were basically from Fergus, Arthur and Mount Forest,” Darroch said. “So those were all small communities back at that time so people came in to work, they all knew each other, they all lived in the same small towns. “So I think a lot of that led to the type of relationship that has lasted for 50 years with the employees.” MACHINERY UPDATES The Nexans plant in Fergus has also been able to update its machines over the years with the confidence that they would be run efficiently, safely and perform at the maximum level. There have been significant changes to that machinery since the plant first opened. “Each machine was controlled independently through the operator’s skills,” Darroch said of the initial machinery. “Today much of that is controlled through PLCs (an industrial computer) and HMIs (touch screens) that actually tie the line together.” The shift in machine control also meant operators needed to become more technical as well. “There’s training within the plant nowadays,” Darroch said. “Everybody has been upgraded as the years have gone by. People learn new technologies and they learn the new systems.” Now machines are highly automated and have been simplified. “Way back you’d have a bunch of people when you fill up a reel and you put a new reel in you might CONTINUED > 4