Company boasts shotcreting expertise in mining and tunneling
Eight years ago, Finland’s Normet selected Sudbury for its Canadian headquarters. A manufacturer of shotcrete sprayers, chemical admixtures and rock reinforcement bolts, the company does business right across the country – from Vancouver Island in the west to Magdalen Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Aside from being an important mining camp, Sudbury makes sense because of its strategic location with the infrastructure and logistics to ship parts and equipment to Normet’s geographically dispersed customer base, said Randy Ouimet, director of sales.
Normet’s sales and service branch– one of 42 around the world – does repair and remanufacturing work, and preps equipment prior to delivery to comply with customer specifications and Canadian safety standards.
The company also manufactures explosives loading machines, water trucks, scissor lifts and boom trucks, but its shotcrete expertise is what it’s best known for in Canada.
“We’ve always tried to have the best technology in the shotcrete market,” said Ouimet. “When we acquired a chemicals company in 2008-2009, we started working with chemists on introducing admixtures into the concrete. Our accelerator dosing system is second to none. When you spray wet shotcrete on the walls and back, it won’t set up very fast. In order to make it set up, you have to add an accelerator.
“We provide the extra value to our customers by working with them to optimize the mix design. We set things up so the shotcrete process will be as efficient, as safe and as productive as possible.”
Normet does a lot of business in the tunneling industry, both in Canada and around the world. On Vancouver Island, for example, it was contracted to help with the construction of a 2.2-kilometre tunnel for the $1.3 billion John Hart Hydroelectric Generating Station project. And it has 18 machines working on the 19-kilometre Eglinton-Crosstown LRT in Toronto, a $5.3 billion light rail transit line that runs underground for 10 kilometres.
“Our tunneling experience helps us immensely in the mining business,” said Ouimet. “In the mining business, you shotcrete to excavate your way into a certain zone (for a limited period of time). In tunneling, you’re shotcreting to keep an excavation open for 100 or more years, so there’s a very specific formula that has to be used and a specific thickness that you have to apply.
“Our machines not only have the ability to do the shotcreting with the finesse the tunnels require, but they also provide a report of exactly what was sprayed.”
Normet is fully invested in the shotcrete business, said Ouimet.
“We manufacture the concrete pump. The accelerator dosing system is ours. The boom is ours. It’s all Normet. The next step is to bring on the technology to make our shotcrete sprayers autonomous.”
Another initiative the company is focused on is the transition to battery-electric equipment.
The demand for battery-electric vehicles is growing around the world, said Ouimet. “Norway, for example, is investing a lot of money in reducing carbon emissions, so they want to see battery-electric vehicles in the tunneling industry.
Australia is also getting into battery-electric technology, but Canada – and Ontario specifically – is the leader in the world because of the cost of ventilation.
“Onaping Depth, for example, doesn’t go forward if they don’t go battery-electric.”
The first battery-electric vehicles from Normet are scheduled to be available in Canada in Q1 2019, said Ouimet.
The company will manufacture 400 machines at its plant in Iisalmi, Finland, this year, and another 100 machines at a second manufacturing facility in Santiago, Chile. It also has 11 manufacturing facilities in its chemicals division.
