Enticing companies to do business in Sault Ste. Marie

The Sault Ste. Marie Innovation Centre (SSMIC), a well-known local agency dedicated to creation of local jobs in the information technology sector, is getting financial help from the federal government to show off its expertise and entice companies to do business in Sault Ste. Marie.

Sault Ste. Marie MP Bryan Hayes was on hand Friday afternoon at the Essar Convergence Centre at Algoma University (home of the SSMIC) to announce $117,500 in FedNor funding to establish a Northern Ontario Innovation Pavilion at the Ontario Centres of Excellence Discovery Conference, which will be held in Toronto May 27-28.

The Sault Ste. Marie Innovation Centre is leading the way in partnership with similar agencies in Sudbury, North Bay and Thunder Bay to provide a place for up to 25 small and medium-sized enterprises (five from Sault Ste. Marie) to take part in the prestigious conference.

SSMIC Executive Director Tom Vair told reporters Friday: “We are the lead applicant on behalf of all the innovation centres in all of Northern Ontario and with each of those centres, the staff are going to go out to companies and start taking applications from those who are interested in going down to the show.”

“Right now, we’ve sliced it up with five companies for each region. We’re going through the selection process now for applicants interested in attending.”
 
“The Ontario Centres of Excellence Discovery Conference is geared to innovative companies that are looking at things in software, information and communications technology, health care and energy, and this year they also have some pavilions for mining and water as well, so it’s a good fit for Northern Ontario,” Vair said.

Vair estimated 2,300 people will attend the trade show in Toronto, which has been billed as “Canada’s leading innovation conference.”

This year’s show will mark the second time the SSMIC has attended. 

Federal government funding helped the Innovation Centre attend the 2011 show.

“We’re hoping it will be an annual event for us. It’s a great forum for our companies, for them to showcase what they’re doing. In 2011, we had 23 companies go to the Conference, and 10 to 15 new business partnerships were formed,” Vair continued. “We had 30 new opportunities down there, six investors were identified for companies, and one company actually closed an investment with a B.C. company from the show floor.”

The ultimate objective is to attract new information technology-based companies to set up shop in Sault Ste. Marie.

“We have had opportunities emerge where companies from down south have actually set up offices in Sault Ste. Marie from contacts we made at the show, and we’re starting to see companies basing their operations in the Sault, and their developers are serving a larger corporate entity in another location.”

The Innovation Centre’s ongoing efforts appear to be successful, as Vair pointed out a luncheon at the Essar Convergence Centre Friday was held for WebFilings, an Iowa-based firm.

“They’ve grown an office of 10 people in Sault Ste. Marie and hope to grow even more in the future.  So what we’re seeing are companies that may have difficulty finding talent in their own region opening up offices in cities like Sault Ste. Marie,” he stated.

WebFilings, Vair explained, is a company that specializes in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission matters.

“They’ve built a cloud-based solution, and they serve a large number of the Fortune 500 companies that are using their information technology solutions in the U.S. and Canada.”

To read a news release issued today by FedNor, please click here