The Story of Niagara Investment Castings Fire Rehabilitation One Year Later
With the final preparations done to ensure his staff was all set to go and enjoy the two-week summer shutdown for 2023 that was now upon them, Niagara Investment Castings President Bob Borthwick could barely contain his excitement of knowing he was just days away from climbing on his shiny black Harley Davidson cruiser to hit the open road and head deep into the United States to enjoy some much-deserved relaxation with his wife and friends.
While this should have been the stuff great memories are made from, that all changed just one day into his two-wheel adventure into the heart of America. Sitting on a peaceful patio Monday evening, enjoying a cold drink with not even the slightest thought about anything work-related, he received a phone call with some of the worst news he could have imagined.
The plant is on fire !!
The Devastation
For all the wrong reasons, July 24, 2023, is a date that Bob, or any of the staff at Niagara Investment Castings for that matter, will not forget.
A fire that started during the evening of the first day of the annual summer shutdown had caused significant damage to the facility. As the local newspaper reported the following day, St Catharines firefighters were on scene for about 12 hours after some people noticed the smoke pouring from the building and called 911. Crews had difficulty accessing the building, having to pull back walls off the facility with heavy excavation equipment to extinguish the fire. The entire rear portion of the building, which housed the crucial dewaxing autoclave and wax reclamation equipment, vital to the investment casting process, was destroyed.
Once firefighters had access to the heart of the fire after tearing walls down, the next challenge was to stop the fire from continuing to burn into the heart of the building, as the fire had moved up into the roof area.
By the time the fire was extinguished, a spokesman for the Zynik Foundry Group, which owns Niagara Investment Castings, said about 30 percent of the building had been lost, with damage estimated to be between $1 million and $3 million.
While the firefighters remained on scene the next day, Bob was back on his Harley motorcycle, this time making the longest ride of his life back to St Catharines to begin what would prove to be one of the biggest challenges to his professional career.
This picture shows the rear of the building looking into the plant from what was the autoclave room. The damage to the roof that runs through the center of the main building can also be clearly seen in this picture.
July 25th, 2023
The next day, Bob returned, and along with many of his staff and the ownership group who descended on the scene of obvious obliteration of the heart of the factory, they saw the task ahead, and the team immediately went to work.
Job one was to ensure that NIC’s customers’ requirements for the castings they supplied to them would be impacted in the least way possible. With so many questions yet unanswered in terms of the impact of the fire, this was a daunting task, but as incredible as the damage was, some good news was obvious right from the start. The fire had managed to be contained to portions of the plant away from those areas where some of the most crucial equipment and vital tooling were located.
As plans were put together, the company’s offices and IT systems were moved into an offsite temporary location, so that on return from the shutdown, the entire administrative staff would have the ability to effectively work with NIC’s clients to advise them of the fire, what the plans were for continuing to supply their castings, and answer any questions they may have, which were of course many.
As Zynik CEO Paul Tuzi stated, “Our customers are loyal to us. We’ve been great suppliers and they’ve been great customers, but business is business. They cannot be without product for months and months,” he said. “If we say we’re going to be up and running in three months, they are going to say, I appreciate it but I need the product.” The entire NIC team knew the hard truth. If their valued customers take their tools and go somewhere else, we’ve got no company left.
While the team at NIC worked to communicate with their customers that they had a plan, the management and ownership took the bull by the horns and decided that NIC was not only going to pull through this disaster but that the company would emerge better than ever.
The Weeks That Followed
Within several days of the fire, the NIC team had expanded on their plan to address their rehabilitation.
The first stage was to waste no time in restoring critical services to the building, clean up the damaged building on the rear of the plant, and then erect temporary walls to close off the damaged areas of the main building. While nothing generally happens quickly in situations like these, the dedicated management team invited the Mayor of St Catharines to the facility to help him and the other decision-makers in the city understand the importance of the 50-year-old company to the community, and to the many families that are impacted by our fire.
President Bob Borthwick, along with Zynik CEO Paul Tuzi, NIC Supervisor Bob Wickert, and St Catharines Mayor Mat Sisco, meet at the NIC plant to discuss the fire and plan forward.
The company was very fortunate that most of the critical processing areas of the plant suffered only minor damage. While some key equipment was lost, the company was also fortunate in that other equipment in the plant which survived was able to be used to temporarily cover for equipment that was lost. As Mr. Borthwick often recounts to his clients “This may sound crazy, but if we were to have a fire, we had the best fire possible.”
Work was soon underway to close off the undamaged portion of the building from the elements and restore utilities to the plant. By mid-September of 2023 the fire damage had been cleaned up, services restored, and the start of the construction of the temporary walls had begun.
Within approximately 10 weeks since the fire, the finished walls were up. More importantly, however, over 90% of the NIC staff was back at work. As President Borthwick recounts “Our Union Associates were the key to our being able to rise from the ashes as quickly as we did. Our people came back to work in conditions that were challenging, to say the least, but they were 100% dedicated and determined to get our business back up and running and keep our customers happy in the face of this disaster. We could not have done it without each and every one of our Associates”. The plant was once again operational, and back to accepting and scheduling their valued customers’ orders for processing.
The next stages of the rehabilitation will include the reconstruction of the portions of the building which were lost or damaged, including replacement of the entire roof and support columns. This is not an easy task to do while keeping a factory running while the work takes place all around it, however that is what was being done. Production of castings continued, not missing a beat.
The next stages of the rehabilitation will include the reconstruction of the portions of the building which were lost or damaged, including replacement of the entire roof and support columns. This is not an easy task to do while keeping a factory running while the work takes place all around it, however that is what was being done. Production of castings continued, not missing a beat.
One Year Later
As July 2024 rolls around to mark the one-year anniversary of the fire, the rehabilitation of the Niagara Investment Castings building, as well as the business itself, continues with the end finally in sight. Reconstruction of the facility continues, new state-of-the-art equipment is soon to be installed, and most incredibly, the company is on track to mark a new sales record for 2024 after already hitting a new record in 2023, the year of the fire.
Business Development Manager for NIC Terry McKone sums it up this way. “Our entire team should be proud of what we have accomplished through the most trying of circumstances. Every person has risen to the challenge we never expected to have to endure. As I stood and looked at the gaping hole at the end of our building on July 25th last year, I would never have imagined that we would have had the incredible support of our customers that we have and that we would still be manufacturing castings for not only every single one of them that we had before the fire but several new clients as well since the fire. It’s been nothing short of inspirational!!”
And as for Bob. He’s planning another relaxing motorcycle vacation this year. But he’s thinking of leaving his phone at home this year !!
