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Testmark – four locations and growing

Company does organic, inorganic, metal, microbiology and toxicology testing of air, soil and water samples There was a time not too long ago when mining companies in Northern Ontario had to send samples from their tailings ponds to southern Ontario f

Company does organic, inorganic, metal, microbiology and toxicology testing of air, soil and water samples

There was a time not too long ago when mining companies in Northern Ontario had to send samples from their tailings ponds to southern Ontario for testing and wait days for the results to come back.

That’s no longer the case thanks to Testmark Laboratories Ltd.

“Testmark fills a very important role because mining companies and our other customers have very real environmental testing needs,” said founder and CEO Mark Charbonneau.

“For example, we do a lot of work for contaminated sites and the advantage for local businesses is that they can drop off a sample and get a result in a very short period of time. That’s huge when you’re decommissioning a site and you’re trying to determine the extent of contamination.”

Charbonneau has at least two passions - Northern Ontario and the measurement sciences – so Testmark makes perfect sense. Born and raised in Sudbury, Charbonneau earned a BSc from Laurentian University and a Masters and PhD in analytical chemistry from the University of Waterloo.

He worked for Imperial Oil and other labs, spent some time in the Ukraine working on a project sponsored by the Canadian International Development Agency, and returned to Sudbury in 1997 to start his own business.

People he knows in the industry told him he was “a little crazy” for establishing an environmental testing lab in Sudbury due to the limited size of the market.

“It’s much easier to build a big central lab and have all your samples coming in to one location,” he said. “You can make a lot more money that way, but at the end of the day, what have you made? Money. Is money that important?”

Obviously, not for Charbonneau, who describes himself as “the technical guy” and is happiest tearing apart and repairing room after room of sophisticated laboratory testing equipment in the 30,000-square foot former elementary school the company moved into 10 years ago.

Without that skill, Testmark would be severely handicapped.

“It’s easier to operate a business like this in southern Ontario because if you have a problem with a piece of equipment, you just call your rep and they’re there in the afternoon,” he said. “We service our own equipment, but one time we didn’t and it cost $5,000 just to bring someone up for the day.”

Four locations

The company hasn’t suffered from Charbonneau’s lack of enthusiasm for poring over operating statements.

In 2007, Testmark acquired a lab in Kirkland Lake. In 2011, it expanded to Mississauga, just west of Toronto, and two years ago, it opened up in Timmins.

There are 70 employees – many of them skilled laboratory technicians. Each location offers analytical testing services in line with Charbonneau’s strongly held belief in having a local presence and not just a reception desk or drop-off depot for samples couriered hundreds of miles away.

“So many businesses are so far removed from community, but community is what it’s all about,” said Charbonneau. Testmark does organic, inorganic, metal, microbiology and toxicology testing of air, soil and water samples to confirm compliance with government guidelines and standards for drinking water, mine effluent and the discharge of water from tailings ponds.

Quality assurance is critical in the environmental testing business. The labs are audited by federal and provincial government testing agencies, they’re ISO compliant and also do their own internal audits, “so the bar is high,” said Charbonneau.

“We’re the largest independent, fullservice commercial lab in Northern Ontario, but that doesn’t mean much because you have to be good at it and in this business, you’re only as good as your last analysis.”

Analytical testing isn’t always straightforward. Sometimes, it’s necessary to question and go beyond standard methodologies.

Charbonneau cites the example of a customer that was using an autoanalyzer to measure the phosphorous from their wastewater treatment plant.

“The autoanalyzer would take a sample, do the analysis and spit out a number. The company was also sending us samples to compare the results and the numbers didn’t jive at all.

The analyzer they were using was based on an Environmental Protection Agency methodology that’s well-suited for extremely high concentrations, but for lower concentrations, the variability was off the map, so everything has limitations, and you have to know what those limitations are.

Numbers

“I worked at one place where they were looking at shutting down a refinery based on the numbers, and the numbers were wrong. You have to understand what the numbers mean and oftentimes, people don’t,” said Charbonneau. “You have to live in a world where the possibility of wrongness exists because it’s always a mistake to make a decision based on one number.

We don’t make a decision unless we look at different types of numbers coming from different types of methodologies. We see if there’s agreement because this is a complex game. It’s not just running something through an autoanalyzer.”

The toxilogical testing the company does uses rainbow trout fingerlings and water fleas, indicator species equivalent to canaries in a mineshaft.

The fingerlings and fleas are introduced into samples of water from tailings ponds and monitored for mortality and other adverse response to determine if the water is safe to discharge into the environment.

“We can measure metals and other things, but there are compounds and toxicity we can’t analyze, so we use the fish,” said Charbonneau.

If the fish don’t make it, the mine is unable to discharge the water. At that point, further testing is required to determine the cause of the mortality. Testmark hasn’t stopped growing.

While still committed to serving communities locally, it’s also doing work for customers in Eastern Canada and Saskatchewan.

At the same time it’s expanding its nutrient, general chemistry and metals testing capabilities in Timmins and Kirkland Lake, and opening a radionucleide lab in Sudbury, making it one of only a handful of labs in Canada able to provide radiological testing services.

www.testmark.ca