Sheet Metal Stamping Simulation

“We were going through a very major hiring,” Mike Mitchell, Southwestern vice-president, said Monday. “We even had a roadside sign at Sandwich Street and Prince Road a couple of weeks ago looking for welders and for specialty trades to help us in the plant.”

 

The sign went back up Monday as the company gears up for another round of hiring –– a move that reflects a brighter local economy, which generated almost 6,000 new jobs over the last 10 months, according to a recent report by the Conference Board of Canada.

 

In fact, job growth in Windsor and Essex County rivalled that of a number of similar-sized census metropolitan areas in southern Ontario. Windsor beat out Hamilton, which produced 1,000 new jobs. as well as St. Catharines-Niagara, Oshawa and London –– all of which lost jobs during the 10-month period. Kitchener, however, created 6,800 jobs.

 

Most of Windsor’s job growth –– 5,000 –– came from the transportation equipment manufacturing sector, which includes motor vehicle manufacturing and motor vehicle parts manufacturing, said Alan Arcand, economist at the conference board.

 

Other sectors that posted smaller job gains were food manufacturing, fabricated metal product manufacturing, machinery manufacturing, and plastics and rubber products manufacturing.

 

At its peak a few years ago, Windsor’s manufacturing sector employed 60,000 people and it’s now at just 42,000, according to Arcand.

 

“You won’t see a return to the pre-recession levels, but the job growth has been impressive.”

 

While the automotive sector continues to be “our bread and butter,” local attempts at diversification are paying off, said Patrick Persichilli, executive vice-president at the WindsorEssex Economic Development Corporation.

 

“We view the conference board statistics positively, obviously,” said Persichilli. “We know that restructuring in the auto sector, product development, new investments in new vehicles have led to a significant uptick in employment opportunities specific to the machine, tool and die and mould sectors. We see many of our shops, locally and regionally, full. People are busy and there’s work.

 

“We’re also seeing an impact from diversification in advanced manufacturing –– things like renewable energy, medical devices and aerospace are having an impact.”

 

In fact, it was Southwestern’s decision to shift its customer base from automotive that led to the current hiring spree and business expansion, said Mitchell.

 

“We were basically an automotive company six years ago, and we saw the writing on the wall if we didn’t change our outlook and try to push forward through the wind and stop blaming automotive, and take what automotive has taught us and parlay it into something else,” said Mitchell.

 

The company now makes mostly large metal components for the mining, oil and gas industries.

 

“So here we were, sitting stagnant, and we’ve just seen a huge increase in our business,” said Mitchell. “We went from probably 50 to 60 people to over 120 people, and we’re still needing people.”

 

Come January, Southwestern expects to hire at least 10 welders, six fitters and a project manager, he said.

 

“We’re very cautious. We’re not flaunting our feathers like a peacock, but we’re out here saying ‘we’ve seen a spurt, we’ve seen some real good volume and we’re on the brink of landing a very large order that would bring us three or four years of consistent business –– $25 million to $50 million worth of business.’”