Niagara Investment Castings fire: ‘All hands

Jul 19, 2023

Cause of July 24 blaze at St. Catharines facility remains undetermined due to extensive damage

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St. Catharines Mayor Mat Siscoe and city staff take a tour of Niagara Investment Castings, which in July sustained a major fire.

It was the start of Niagara Investment Castings’ annual summer shutdown. For two weeks each year, the company closes its doors for yearly maintenance and a summer holiday for employees.

Just three days later, on July 24, several employees were across the street enjoying downtime at Puddy’s Bar & Grill. At about 7:30 p.m. they saw smoke coming from the St. Catharines facility, immediately called 911 and alerted Paul Tuzi to the fire at 16 Smith St.

Firefighters were on scene for about 12 hours, and had difficulty accessing the building, with crews having to pull back walls off the facility to extinguish the fire.

Tuzi, chief executive officer of Zynik Foundry Group, which owns Niagara Investment Castings, said the about 30 per cent of the building was lost, with damage estimated to be between $1 million and $3 million.

But with the nature of the industry, it is under threat of losing its future.

“It’s 50-something families that work here every day and it’s not about throwing money around. It’s about getting it up and running again,” said Tuzi. “I can’t shift the work anywhere else. If we shift this work, it is never going to come back, we’re in big trouble. We are all-hands-on-deck trying to save this business.”

Much of the damage was contained to the back of the facility, in the autoclave area where wax is removed from shells. In the metal casting process, after a mould has been produced and dried, the disposable wax is melted and removed. Once complete, it leaves a cavity into which metal is poured and solidified.

The process relies on precise tooling and equipment to ensure the final metal parts meet certain specifications. an The concern for Tuzi is customers will shop around for other facilities.

While many are understanding and willing to wait in the short term, if getting back to normal takes longer than a few weeks, that time frame becomes “impossible.”

“Our customers are loyal to us and 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.’

“If they take their tools and go somewhere else, we’ve got no company left.”

But more than the company, Tuzi said what is at stake is saving jobs of its “unbelievably skilled” employees who make “very, very intricate, high-level engineered products.”

“This is a world-class facility. It is probably one of the best investment casting facilities in North America,” he said. “Our main asset that we have in this company is our skilled workers … these guys, they need to work. These are good-paying union jobs with pensions.”

For the past few days, a handful of employees have been cleaning what remains of the building, taking away 10 lugger bins full of broken walls and damaged equipment. Not much of the back building remains, with the roof gone and walls demolished.

They are doing what they can do make it a safe work environment, setting it up for temporary production. Part of the process includes bringing in the City of St. Catharines to explain what they do, the value of the company to Niagara and trying to expedite building permits.

Tuzi said the city has been “extremely responsive.” The plan is to build temporary walls to enclose part of the factory so workers can do their jobs safely until the roof can be rebuilt and a permanent solution created.

The quicker repairs get underway, the quicker employees can be back in the building and customers will stay put.

“The plan, if all things go well, we’ll be up and running again in a couple of weeks,” said Tuzi. “All the engineering studies are done, we’ve got electricians here trying to put things back together again for us. We’ve done the cleanup and now it is just a rebuild … we’ll be back stronger and better than before.”

The Office of theOntario Fire Marshal was called in following the July fire but told The Standard “there was no prospect of conducting an investigation” because the damage was so extensive.

St. Catharines Fire Services Chief Dave Upper said his team did its own investigation and concluded the fire originated in the autoclave room, “however, the cause remains undetermined.”

“You have to be able to prove without a reasonable doubt this is what caused it and they just weren’t able to do that,” said Upper.

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