Northern Ontario Heritage Fund (NOHFC) dispensed more than $620,000 last week and this week to assist with business expansions, product innovation and for community recreational infrastructure.
BioNorth Solutions, a Thunder Bay bio-environmental remediation company, cashed in $242,500 to purchase equipment and with renovations to two buildings at a new location in the city. The new facilities will contain a manufacturing plant, warehouse, production laboratory, research and development laboratory and office space.
“The project has increased our operations from 3,900 square feet to 8,200 square feet, which has enabled us to become more operationally efficient when producing our packaged microbes that support hydrocarbon remediation and agricultural growth applications,” said Amber Kivisto, company cofounder and president, in a government news release.
Axiom Modeling & Design in Shuniah, outside Thunder Bay, is applying $67,990 in funding to commercialize an innovative software, which creates medical patient treatment plans using modelling and visual design tools. The NOHFC release said the software will reduce the workload associated with managing electronic health and medical records.
“This kind of funding is critical for the professional development of young software developers, as well as for the progress of health-tech startups such as our own,” said company founder Dr. Arnold Kim in a statement.
On the community infrastructure side, the City of Timmins fielded more than $311,000 to build an outdoor multi-use sports court for basketball, tennis, pickleball and badminton next to the Connaught Community Hall.
NOHFC’s spending largesse also applies to funding entry-level positions at a number of companies and organizations.
The regional development agency said it’s spending more than $6.3 million to support the creation of 198 internships in the Thunder Bay region. NOHFC highlighted a few in a Sept. 13 news release.
Roots to Harvest, a community food centre, and St. Andrews Soup Kitchen, better known as the Dew Drop Inn, each received $35,0000 to hire interns to run their services and manage daily operations.
CSL Environmental & Geotechnical received $33,488 to hire an environmental geoscientist intern to conduct environmental and site assessments.
De Bakker Law recevied $23,347 to employ a client service rep and $12,471 went to Testmark Laboratories to hire a lab technician intern to conduct environmental quantitative and qualitative analysis.
The funding was made available through NOHFC’s People and Talent Program.
The rest of companies and organizations with internship funding are found on this government spreadsheet.
