Mineral, water testing expand Kirkland Lake lab.

Kirkland Lake -- New drinking water regulations and a boom in the mining exploration industry have led to two expansions for Accurassay Laboratories Limited.

Dr. George Duncan, president of the company, recently moved his 2,500-square-foot Kirkland Lake operation of 14 employees into a 9,000-sq.-ft. building on Government Road, just west of the gold-mining town. His Thunder Bay mineral division, with a staff of 30, also moved into a similar-sized space in late June.

The Thunder Bay lab is called Accurassay Laboratories Ltd. and is one of the few accredited labs for mineral assay work in Canada. Its 30 employees perform mining analysis on precious and base metals, rocks, and soils for many of the big mining players and junior mining exploration companies in Canada.

The accredited Kirkland Lake operation performs environmental analysis, and is known as Accuracy Environmental Laboratories Ltd. (AEL), which analyzes most of the drinking water in northeastern Ontario, plus effluent, soil and air quality analysis, and landfill monitoring.

"With the mineral lab, you get hundreds of samples, but they want two or three things measured," Duncan says. "With the environmental lab, you get dozens of samples, but they want hundreds of things measured."

A third part of the AEL team is a company called A & A Environmental Services, an environmental consulting company headquartered in Kirkland Lake, that does site investigations and cleanups.

"We investigate the property environmentally," Duncan says. "We do a lot of the hydrogeological work, landfill monitoring and ground water studies where you're looking at the flow of ground water through a site."

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With a myriad of consulting offices throughout Ontario that employ approximately 15 to 20 people collectively, Duncan says they are climbing nicely on the national scale and are positioning themselves to double their capacity.

"Our sales volume this year, by the end of April, was the same as the entire previous year."

However, in past years, the sun did not always shine brightly as the company rode the roller coaster wave of the mining exploration boom in the late '80s and the leaner recession years of the mid-90s.

Nevertheless, Duncan says the real growth has been within the last year since the Safe Drinking Water Act, 2002, came into effect after the Walkerton fiasco when seven people died and close to 1,300 others became ill from e-coli contamination in the town's drinking water.

Although the lab's profits are described as healthy, it doesn't come without a price. Duncan says increased costs for accreditation and skyrocketing insurance rates are squeezing the small player out of the industry.

"Our insurance costs went up 800 percent in one year (from 2003 to 2004)," he says.

Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, laboratories can be fined up to $5.5 million per day and $3.5 million per day for each technician should an infraction occur.

But AEL continues to grow due to the increased demands from various sectors in the northeastern Ontario corridor and the high level of technology the lab offers.

"To get labs with this kind of facility, you generally look south," he says.

Duncan has increased his staff numbers and will continue to hire as he develops his marketplace.

He also expects his environmental lab for microbiology in Thunder Bay, which recently received its licence in early June of this year, will pick up business once the company gets settled in its new location.

As Accurassay and Accuracy Environmental Laboratories expand their current businesses, Duncan intends to become a national and international leader in the mineral assay business.

www.accurassay.com

By ADELLE LARMOUR

Northern Ontario Business