Federal funding boosts six local businesses
Granite counter-tops will soon be custom-cut in Keene with the finest equipment available, thanks to a new federal funding handed out Friday.
Gus’s Kitchen and Bath Inc. on Highway 7 was one of six local companies to receive $100,000 from the feds to help them expand their businesses.
The money is coming from the Eastern Ontario Development Program. It’s expected to spur enough business expansion to create a total of 37 full-time jobs, across all six companies.
Status of Women Minister and Peterborough-Kawartha MP Maryam Monsef made the funding announcement in the showroom at Gus’s on Friday.
Monsef said the federal government recognizes that hard-working business owners can use help to grow and create jobs. She said it’s a strategy that works.
“I’d like to congratulate the jobcreators and manufacturers in this room,” she said, standing amid the vanities and free-standing tubs in the showroom.
Wendy Dozois, who co-owns Gus’s with her husband Gus, said the equipment the company currently uses for cutting counter-tops is “primitive” and requires a lot of grunt work from employees.
Now they are about to buy the best cutting equipment available on the market, which she says will allow them to cut the most complicated kitchen designs in far less time than ever before.
She says they will be able to cut counters for 11 kitchens daily. That’s going to significantly reduce the wait time for customers while making the work far less physically rigorous for employees, Dozois said.
Five other companies also got $100,000 each, on Friday:
Dufferin Concrete (Parkhill Rd. E. in Peterborough)
Rotospa Hot Tubs (Lakefield)
G.B. Book Plastics Ltd. (Pido Rd. in Peterborough – a custom supplier of precision plasticmoulded parts)
Rad Tracker Corporation (Warsaw - an engineering and manufacturing company that develops new technology for highspeed tracked vehicles)
Worbo Inc. (O’Brien Dr. in Peterborough - a manufacturer of high-temperature insulation sleeves and curtains)
The federal funding is being administered in Eastern Ontario through the Northumberland Community Futures Development Corporation (CFDC), a business development organization based in Cobourg.
Wendy Curtis, the executive director of the Northumberland CFDC, said the money being offered to each of the six companies isn’t a grant: the business owners are each investing a further $100,000 of their own money - if not more - into the projects.
The idea is to give the business owners a chance to initiate an expansion project that might be too pricey, otherwise.
“The intent of the program is to inspire action,” she said.
Mary Smith, the mayor of Selwyn Township and the deputy warden of Peterborough County, said she was impressed to see business expansion.
“Congratulations to every business involved, and to every agency that put this together,” she said.
Monsef said she was pleased to see new jobs being created.
“Here’s to celebrating more successes like this one,” she said.