Shell Canada plant near Sarnia earns international honor

Shell Canada’s Sarnia Manufacturing Center has won international recognition for its recent capital projects.

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The Shell site near Corunna, which includes a refinery and chemical plant, recently received the 2024 Best Site Award from the International Benchmarking Consortia of Independent Project Analysis (IPQ).

“This particular award is a big deal, ultimately, for companies like Shell,” and its Sarnia projects team, said Matthew Slotwinski, chief executive of the Sarnia-Lambton Economic Partnership. “It really does show their competitiveness against major site operations around the world.”

Shell’s projects team in Sarnia competed against 19 other sites representing 12 companies worldwide for the award, a partnership release said.

The award, for projects at the Shell site from 2020-24, was based on cost-effectiveness, project controls, schedule predictability and other criteria, Shell said in a release.

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The International Benchmarking Consortia is a globally recognized authority in project evaluation that independently assesses project performance, the partnership said.

“This prestigious award is given annually to only one site globally, so we’re exceptionally proud,” Shell’s Daniel Tardif said in the release.

The recognition is shared with the site’s employees and contract partners, including CMS Inc., Worley Ltd., Tecsar Engineering Inc. and Kent PLC, and Shell’s construction contractors.

“There’s tremendous pride from those who collaborated” on the projects, Slotwinski said. “But also, there should be tremendous pride from the community that our industry is able to win such a prestigious award.”

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“There’s no shortage of other companies across Sarnia-Lambton that can be equally successful in delivering a project,” he added.

The Shell facility produces gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and chemicals including isopropyl alcohol, a key ingredient in hand sanitizers, disinfectants, and other medical products, Shell’s website says.

Sarnia and neighboring St. Clair Township are home to refining and chemical manufacturing sites known locally as Chemical Valley. The community has become the home of engineering and industrial manufacturing companies and skilled construction trades people working on expansions and maintenance at the industrial sites.

The award highlights “the capabilities, capacity, excellence of what we’re able to do, what we’re able to produce, what we’re able to accomplish locally across this industrial sector,” Slotwinski said.

“Our industrial sites here in Sarnia-Lambton are world-class,” he said. “They strive for excellence in everything they do, as do the companies that collaborate and feed into the projects.”

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