Sarnia feels like home to new Nova Chemicals VP

Joe Wolf often hears questions about his recent move from Florida to Sarnia for his new job as vice-president of manufacturing East with Nova Chemicals.

Article content

He was appointed in September to fill a vacancy created when Rob Thompson became vice-president of west manufacturing based in Alberta.

Article content

“Currently, I was born and raised in South Dakota, so this isn’t a big stretch for me,” Wolf said about the change in weather between Sarnia and previous stops in Florida and Texas during a long career in chemical manufacturing.

“It has been a number of years since I was in cold weather,” Wolf said.

“What I was kind of chasing, through the last stages of my career, is to live in a community that really was caring,” he said. “It feels like I’m coming back home.”

Nova Chemicals is the largest private-sector employer in the Sarnia area with four production sites in St. Clair Township, including its Corunna site which produces ethylene from ethane, a component of natural gas, delivered by pipeline from the Eastern US, as well as polyethylene plastic manufacturing sites in Corunna, Mooretown and next door to the Corunna site on Rokeby Line.

Article content

The newly constructed polyethylene facility on Rokeby Line was part of a more than $2-billion project by Nova Chemicals that also included expansion of production at the Corunna site. The project began in 2017.

After initially traveling back and forth between Florida and the Sarnia area, Wolf and his wife moved this month to Sarnia.

“Every one of the steps in my career, whether it was in Texas or Florida,” Wolf said, one of the first things he has asked is, “Where can I help?”

That has included serving on boards and as a volunteer, which is something Wolf said both he and wife enjoy.

“I always remember my mom telling me. . . ‘Don’t pray for blessings, pray to be a blessing,’ ” he said.

“At this stage in my career, it’s really about giving back.”

Article content

Wolf said he has been working to connect with the people at Nova in the Sarnia area since taking on the new role.

Nova Chemicals has more than 1,000 employees in the Sarnia area, according to the company’s website.

“My passion is to keep people safe and develop people to their full potential,” Wolf said. “I figure if I do those two things really well, all of the other things that we measure kind of take care of themselves.”

Wolf joined Nova Chemicals after working for competitors and said that now that he has had the chance to “lift up the hood” in recent months, “the competitive advantage for Nova is the people.”

“They’re disciplined in process. They’re disciplined in procedure,” he said. “They really care about one another.”

Article content

He noted that recently the company in the region completed a year injury-free.

“I’ve been doing this a long time,” Wolf said. ”That’s only happened once in my career.”

The Rokeby site is now operating, Wolf said.

“It has been up and down. It’s a brand-new facility so the learning curve is steep,” he said. “Every month we get a little bit better.”

The site achieved “a continuous run milestone” in February “and we just started up another long run,” he said. “The proof will be in what the customers make of our product.”

The Rokeby site uses ethylene from the Corunna site to make polyethylene resins in pellet form which is used to make products that include bags and liners, caps and closures, food packaging and molded goods.

Article content

Being given a responsibility that includes a new manufacturing site is “a little bit daunting because I’m on the shoulders of a lot of people who have been through a five-year ordeal from greenfield” to construction and startup, he said.

“It’s a huge investment for the community” with “a lot of jobs, a lot of economic benefit and it’s getting a lot of attention from Nova Chemicals as a whole,” Wolf said.

Along with a large number of construction jobs while the plant was being built, the expansion added 150 jobs with Nova in the Sarnia area, the company has said.

“It’s not very often you spend that kind of money on a greenfield investment anymore,” Wolf said.

“I’ve only seen a few in my 30-year career,” he said.

Wolf spoke about a company open house he and his wife attended in the fall that “reinforced what the attraction was for me to come to this area.”

Company employees and their families were at the event. “You just watch these people and you see the pride in their faces, just lighting up.”

“I made the right decision,” Wolf said.

“Hopefully, I can deliver for the community and the company.”

Article content