MacLean acquires underground test facility in Sudbury  

maclean engineering

MacLean Engineering has purchased the former MTI test facility in Sudbury, Ontario.

Located less than a 10-minute drive from the company’s Sales, Service and Support Centre, the property includes an about 300-metre underground ramp down to a depth of about 40 metres at an average grade of 15 per cent.

As well, the underground facility includes an excavated cavern where shaft jumbo mucking training had previously been conducted, along with a 4,500 square-meter building on a three-hectare site.

“We intend to utilize this facility as an innovation hub for our company, just as Bob Lipic Sr. did with MTI when the test facility was originally developed in 2012,” said President Kevin MacLean. “I want our activities at site to honour the tradition of mining entrepreneurship that Bob embodied in the Sudbury mining industry.”

The facility will provide the company with “unfettered access” to an underground location for research and development of new products and technologies.

Stella Holloway, general manager for MacLean’s Sudbury operations, explained the site is “a mine-equivalent setting for conducting quality assurance/quality control checks on MacLean equipment prior to shipping, a place where employees and customers alike can be given hands-on exposure to our equipment in the working environment, as well as a great location for conducting photo and video shoots.”

MacLean Engineering designs, manufactures, markets and supports engineered solutions across the mining, municipal, environmental and industrial goods sectors. The company’s mining division builds a comprehensive line of mobile equipment for full-range mining cycle support across all underground mining methods in ground support, ore flow and utility vehicle product categories.

“Underground ramp access gives the company the ability to ‘ramp up’ our product development and testing efforts, which is a significant step for MacLean and I am personally gratified that Bob’s vision of a dedicated test facility is going to continue,” adds MacLean Chairman and Founder, Don MacLean.

“I started my mining career in the 1950s working underground at INCO, this city is where the first MacLean branch was established back in 1995 and we now have 100 employees locally, so the Sudbury basin remains at the core of the MacLean business just as it remains at the heart of mining activity in Canada.”

Founded in 1973, MacLean is based in the southern Georgian Bay region of Ontario, with branch offices across Canada as well as in Mexico, Peru, South Africa and Australia, providing service and support to a global client base.

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