Nexans Canada Inc. is celebrating its 50th anniversary at the Fergus plant.
Located at 670 Gzowski Street, the plant produced its first piece of wire on Aug. 6, 1966, the same day as the Fergus Scottish Festival and Highland Games in Fergus.
At the time Fergus Cable Limited was producing predominately automobile parts.
After several name and ownership changes the Nexans plant now focuses primarily on low voltage residential, commercial and industrial cables.
However, the plant also makes bids on some international contracts and has produced projects for Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Panama, Egypt, South Korea and Thailand, to name a few.
In a recent company shift the Fergus plant underwent a $10-million expansion, which was officially announced on Oct. 1, 2014, to streamline company logistics. The brand new warehouse and outdoor storage expansion totalled 225,000 square feet.
$5 million investment
In addition the plant also made a $5-million investment into upgrading about 12 per cent of its machinery to new equipment to increase capacity in the manufacturing of low voltage residential, commercial and industrial cables.
In doing this, Nexans closed down the Milton distributing centre to centralize everything in Fergus, allowing the plant to thrive.
“It’s in a good spot,” plant manager Cameron Matthew said. “There’s a good community around here so we’ve always had good people that we can bring in and hire and just geographically it happens to be in a really good spot – that’s maybe a little bit of luck.”
The company is holding an open house for its 50th anniversary on June 11 from 10am to 2pm at the 670 Gzowski Street plant. The community is encouraged to stop in for a plant tour and to learn about the changes and updates.
