Arnprior, Ontario

160 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 12 ARNPR IOR ONTAR IO, CANADA very huge component for us as far as partners go.” As for other important relationships, Arnprior works in partnership with neighboring municipalities on what Paquette describes as “joint agreements on fire services and mutual aid, and we have agreements with our neighbors to provide recreational and library services to their residents at a reasonable rate.” On the workforce side, Arnprior is home to several major industries, some changing hands through the years. “What’s interesting to me, is that while we had some industries move out of town or shut down, they sold to other corporations that kept the business going,” Paquette says, offering the example of Boeing, which had a huge presence in Arnprior from as far back as the 1950s. “It had been sold to a company called Arnprior Aerospace which took over that industry and kept it going. Pfizer had a presence here for many, many years and it sold to Pillar5, which is another pharmaceutical company that took over and kept that business going. We’ve had several examples of that and have been very blessed that we haven’t lost any major industries other than Sandvik.” Although the former Sandvik plant was shut down for several years, it has been reopened by MetaLigna, a modular home company, who have also relocated their corporate headquarters to Arnprior. Mayor Stack notes the significance of this to the community, offering, “The MetaLigna Group buying the Sandvik plant was really important because it was a serious environmental location due to the previous operations and chemicals. They did a lot of work with the province and built a 10-year remediation plan, and were then able to get financing and purchase that plant. They have 50 employees there, and in the next few years they expect to hit about 250 employees.” Pillar5, another major employer, was recently bought by Parisian cosmetics company Anjec, which plans to keep the company open and expand its operations. “They see this as their entryway into the pharmaceutical business,” acknowledges Stack. “They not only bought the company, as their Pillar5 VP told me, but they also bought the company, the employees, and