It’s business as usual at the Thunder Bay Alstom plant where tariffs imposed by the U.S. government are not expected to have a great impact.
Work continues on the Toronto Transit Commission light rail vehicle street car and the Metrolinx bi-level refurbishment for overhaul contracts.
Lindsay Fenton, the site managing director for Alstom, said they don’t see a substantial impact, specifically for the Thunder Bay plant because of the “scope of the work” they’re doing.
“Things are changing every day and we are keeping up with the situation, but specifically for the kind of work we’re doing in Thunder Bay, I don’t think (the tariffs) will be as impactful as they could be to some of the other sites in the U.S.,” she said. “Our government relations team is looking at that and assessing what it’s going to look like overall for us.”
Fenton noted that overall, the Thunder Bay plant could feel a “very small percentage” of impact from the small amount of parts it orders from the United States.
“A lot of those parts, for the overhaul work we’re doing with the new bi-level project, are being renewed in house,” she said. “There’s a bigger portion of that scope that’s already in house.”
As work progresses on the Metrolinx bi-level contract, Fenton said they are becoming “much stronger” at learning new things on that new project.
“That was a bit of a challenging learning curve, but we started to deliver cars to Metrolinx now, so things are starting to stabilize, which is really good,” she said.
Progress on the TTC street cars continues to go smoothly as the light-rail cars are being delivered on schedule.
