Listen to Victoria and Mark’s Conversation Here:
Curious about the booming potential of Alberta’s Industrial Heartland and its impact on the global petrochemical landscape? Join Victoria Meyer as she speaks with Mark Plamondon, Executive Director of the Alberta Industrial Heartland Association, to uncover the immense benefits of investing in this strategic region. From low-cost feedstocks and world-class carbon management systems to a robust infrastructure and skilled workforce, Mark highlights the unique advantages that have positioned Alberta’s Industrial Heartland as a premier destination for major capital projects.
Mark discusses significant developments, including Dow’s groundbreaking net-zero ethylene manufacturing facility and Shell’s advancements in carbon capture projects. The episode also touches on the role of logistical certainty, international investments, and the region’s future growth prospects. Additionally, hear about the upcoming Canadian Petrochemical Summit in Lake Louise, which promises to be a vital platform for industry leaders navigating global markets and fostering meaningful connections.
Be sure to check out the full episode to learn more about:
- A look at the growth of Alberta’s Industrial Heartland
- Breaking down the economics: How feedstock advantages shape petrochemical investment decisions
- The role of carbon capture in industrial development – from existing operations to future expansion plans and why timing matters
- How global supply chain dynamics and port strikes are affecting industrial development, plus insights on Asian investment trends in North America
- The challenges of navigating uncertainty in a changing political landscape – and how regions work to maintain stable investment environments
- A discussion on leadership – why stepping up to take clear positions matters and the importance of leading with integrity
“There’s so many things that need to line up for a company to reach final investment decision… helping roadblocks out of the way or streamline the process, or just getting the information that they need to make a decision or partnering them with the right people to get their project moving forward, all part of the process here, and that’s what we’re doing here.” – Mark Plamondon
Other links:
Mark Plamondon Episode 145 Alberta’s Industrial Heartland’s Competitive Edge in Petrochemicals
Register for the Canadian Petrochemical Summit this June 17-19 in Lake Louise, Alberta
Register for The 40th World Petrochemical Conference by S&P Global this March 17 – 21 in Houston, Texas. The Chemical Show audience receives a special discount of 5%. Register today using code WPC2025ChemShow5%.
Download: 10 Leadership Lessons for Chemical Executives
Download: 7 Trends Shaping the Future of the Chemical Industry
Subscribe to The Chemical Show on YouTube
Watch Victoria and Mark Discuss Alberta’s Industrial Heartland on Youtube Here:
Investment Opportunities in Alberta’s Industrial Heartland with Mark Plamondon
Welcome back to The Chemical Show. Today, I am speaking with Mark Plamondon, who is the executive director of the Alberta Industrial Heartland Association. You may remember that Mark was previously a guest on The Chemical Show, and we will link to that episode so that you’ve got access to that. And we’re gonna be talking about the wonderful world of Canada and specifically Alberta and The Industrial Heartland and just the the benefits of investing in that region and more.
Subscribe To The Chemical Show On Your Favorite Platform
So, Mark, thanks for joining me today.
Very nice to see you Victoria, and thank you once again, for having me on the show. Appreciate it.
Absolutely. So just provide if you would, a brief overview to you and what your role is within the Heartland and also to the Heartland itself.
Glad to do so. So I’m Mark Plamondon. I’m the executive director here at Alberta’s Industrial Heartland Association. At our association we represent five municipalities, the city of Edmonton, city of Fort Saskatchewan, Strathcona, Sturgeon, and Lamont Counties. These all have land in an area called Alberta’s Industrial Heartland, which sits in the Northeast Corner of the Edmonton region in Alberta.
So if you go to Alberta and then Edmonton in the Northeast Corner of Edmonton, there’s a 582 square kilometer heavy industrial cluster called Alberta’s Industrial Heartland. It is Canada’s largest hydrocarbon processing region. We’ll talk a little bit later about what the competitive advantages are and why companies are building projects here. Our association, we’re funded by those municipalities, and we are focused in sort of three main areas. We’re focused on promoting the region, so there’s a huge marketing component. We do a fair amount of international travel. We work with companies when they’re assessing their next capital project, we want them to to assess The Industrial Heartland and see if their next major capital project makes sense in Alberta’s Industrial Heartland. And we also have a significant effort in improving the region.
So improving is either from a competitiveness standpoint, an infrastructure standpoint, a regulatory streamlining standpoint. This is all done through advocacy and partnerships with government and with other like-minded stakeholders. Then we also have somebody focused on communications, social license, making sure that there’s good dialogue between industry and community and that there’s support for growth in the region. In a growing region, it’s obviously very helpful if you have supportive community and strong social license, which we have here. So we spend a fair amount of time on that as well, in partnership with the companies that operate here.
I think that’s so critical. I think the role that you guys play is so critical because, of course, investment doesn’t just happen. It happens with the support of the community, with the support of organizations such as yours, the municipality, and also other companies. I think it’s it’s so critical the role that you play in that area.
Yeah. There’s so many things that need to line up for a company to reach a final investment decision. So helping get roadblocks out of the way or streamline the process or just getting the information that they need to make a decision or partnering them with the right people to get their project moving forward, that’s all part of the process here, and that’s what we’re doing here.
I love it. So when we last spoke, Dow had just announced its FID for its net-zero ethylene cracker in Fort Saskatchewan. To the extent that you’re able to, how is that progressing?
It was probably over a year ago, maybe thirteen months ago I think, that Dow reached a final investment decision for this. They’re the world’s first net-zero ethylene manufacturing facility here in the Industrial Heartland, which was a very exciting announcement for our region because it’s such a large project. Not only is it such a large project, it is, of course, that first net-zero ethylene manufacturing facility that really puts The Industrial Heartland on the map. Dow is a global company, and they can put capital in a lot of places, and they have chosen to do this project here in Alberta’s Industrial Heartland. I can’t speak specifically to their project, but just in general in The Industrial Heartland, there’s been so much activity. And, of course, the big project is the Dow project.
We are seeing ramping up of traffic through the region. We are seeing workforces grow to meet the growing construction profile, primarily at the Dow site. We’d expect peak labor to be reaching here by probably the end of this year, but we’re seeing growth at their site and then in a number of other areas as well when it comes to construction activities. Because since the Dow project reached FID, there’s been a couple other final investment decisions, which are in the public domain as well. Shell reached final investment decision on their Polaris project, which is a carbon capture project at Shell’s Scotford site. Talk a little bit about the carbon sequestration capability in this region and why that’s a competitive advantage for us here. And also, Shell in partnership with ATCO NPower announced their Atlas project, which is a sequestration project. So both these projects were announced final investment decisions at the same time, so there’s activities for that project as well.
We’re also seeing, there’s current construction activities in fractionation facilities. There’s fractionation expansions in the region. So there’s lots of activity. Like, we’re approaching $50 billion of assets in the ground here now. And before the end of the decade, we’ll be well over $60-65 billion in assets. Linde has announced that they’re building a $2 billion hydrogen facility on the Dow site to meet the needs of the net-zero path to zero project. So it’s just an exciting time.
I haven’t been up to Canada in several years, but I can only imagine that it is really hustling and bustling in that region. Not just because of those direct investments, but I think ACC had published some data a while ago that says something like seven jobs are created for every job that’s created inside the petrochemical industry. Right? Whether it be grocery stores and schools and doctors and nurses and all of that. So that’s a huge impact for your region.
Yeah. There’s both the direct and the indirect impact. There’s all that stuff. There’s the indirect impacts as well, but also the spend that the companies have amongst other companies, the supply chain. I mean there’s the knock on effects from workers staying in hotels and eating at restaurants and all that stuff. But even the spend of companies in The Industrial Heartland, it’s a real economic engine for the region, for the province, and for the country.
Yeah. So what about The Heartland makes it such an attractive place for companies to invest?
I’m really optimistic about the future growth here for The Industrial Heartland. And there’s a few things that have been competitive advantages for decades, of course. And then there’s really the growth in the drive for low carbon products and industrial decarbonization that enhances that further. Just to start, the main economic driver in this part of the world is the low cost feedstocks. So low cost methane, propane, ethane, butane, particularly in the petrochemical space coming out of natural gas, natural gas liquids. It’s the lowest cost feedstocks in North America. Your discount rate here versus the Gulf Coast is typically between 30 to 40%.
That ranges day to day, but on average, you’re looking at a 30 to 40% discount for those feedstocks here. That’s all money. When your largest operating cost is your feedstock having a significant discount for your methane or your propane or whatever you’re using as your feedstock, that’s a tremendous competitive advantage. And as you know, those feedstock costs in North America are a lot cheaper than other parts of the world too. There’s a few pockets, of course, that still have really strong advantage. But in general, North American feedstock costs are low relative to other jurisdictions. And here in Alberta, we have a discount compared to, say, Gulf Coast. So there is a tremendous economic advantage, and that’s driven investment here for decades.
What’s really been interesting over the last five to seven years, is the interest in producing lower carbon products. And so that leads to companies looking at carbon capture and sequestration is one of the technologies that large emitters would look to, and this jurisdiction is world leading when it comes to that. This region has operating carbon sequestration assets that have been operating since 2015. There’s the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, which is a carbon trunk line that leads to additional sequestration capability. That was built with capacity of 14,600,000 tons a year of CO2 carrying capability. It’s operating around 10% full, and so you’ve got 90% capacity and capability in that asset that companies can take advantage of. That capital is already invested in the ground, and companies can come and work with the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line to look to sequester.
But that’s just one asset.
That’s so significant because, of course, we know that there’s a lot of companies and regions talking about building carbon capture and sequestration, and it’s expensive. It is an expensive project to build. It is time consuming to build any of that, and so for that to be part of your core infrastructure, is a real significant advantage.
Well, it’s infrastructure today that’s working today. So that’s the other advantage. It’s operational today. So it’s not like it’s something that we’re hoping to do, this region has done that. Companies in this region have built that pipeline. That’s an example, but I also wanna elaborate on that a little bit. The government of Alberta two to three years ago, they allocated space and they identified carbon hub operators.
They awarded carbon hub operator status. So there’s six of them in the region that are now progressing projects or at least doing the studies that are necessary and trying to understand if they’ll advance their carbon hub operator projects. One of them is the Atlas project that I mentioned earlier, but there’s five others that are under study. So that would give optionality. So you’re building a large emitting petrochemical facility. You have optionality or you will have optionality as to how you can manage your emissions. And so carbon management is another key advantage here that I’m gonna say over the last five to seven years has really come to the forefront here as competitive advantage. So you’ve got low cost feedstocks, carbon management capability, then you have great logistics here with respect to proximity or getting the markets.
Two plus one railways service the area, moving products out to the West Coast or the East Coast or down to the Gulf Coast. Good accessibility into The United States markets with the rail networks. And then, of course, we’ve got 582 square kilometers of flat, pre-zoned, heavy industrial land, and a skilled workforce here. We encourage companies to come and have have a look here. You’ll see the cluster, and you’ll realize that the skilled workforce that’s here to operate and build these facilities, it’s a bona fide cluster, a skilled workforce to do what needs to be done, and I’m really excited and optimistic about the future here.
I think that’s exciting. And I think a few points of that are so critical. So number one, I think just the natural gas backbone from a feedstock perspective. On a relative basis, it’s already a relatively clean feedstock as compared to heavy oils, as it pairs compared to coal, which is being utilized as a feedstock for some chemical products elsewhere. So I think just starting with that and then layering in the carbon capture, layering in the infrastructure, and in the workforce becomes compelling because as you know, and we’ve talked about this before, I’ve spent some time developing projects back in my corporate days. Location is always critical. Close to the customer, close to the feedstocks, and close to your transportation is critical, but also being in a friendly and well skilled business environment is really critical.
I just wanna add one more thing too, Victoria, we’ve done some work over the last year. We will be rolling that out probably here in the first quarters. We’ve done some work benchmarking our industrial cluster here versus other some other global industrial clusters, because you mentioned carbon intensity. And so we’re doing that from an ESG lens basically. The carbon intensity of your feedstocks, your grid, the capability or the diversity of your workforce and skill set and proximity of workforce. There’s a whole bunch of measures between the environment and social and governments that we’ve used to benchmark The Industrial Heartland versus other jurisdictions. And for a functioning industrial cluster, it’s world leading from that standpoint. So for companies globally where that matters, this will be a jurisdiction for them.
We’re in a changing world in a lot of ways, when I think about just the global economics and the geopolitical climate. The US has just inaugurated a new president. Canada is poised for another federal election. There’s just a lot going on. How does this influence investment in Alberta? How are you managing and navigating some of those changes?
You’ll hear often and when you’re talking with business leaders and others, like, uncertainty is always a headwind for investment. And you can understand why. When you’re investing other people’s money and lots of it, hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, boards of directors and executives, there’ll be a tendency to wait and see what the end of the uncertainty is. If it is gonna become more certain before you can make a decision. Typically, uncertainty leads to a bit of a pause in capital investment. There’s not much we can do about the uncertainty, but what we can do is a few things that we focus on. So, of course, we have an advocacy component that we work with like minded stakeholders on where we’re advocating for specific policies.
Over the years, we’ve been fortunate that there’s been good traction in a lot of things that have improved competitiveness and improved the regulatory streamlining here in Alberta. So we put in our best efforts to work with like minded partners and governments to try to improve the region from a number of fronts that hopefully improves the certainty for companies that are looking to invest. So that’s one. We also help companies navigate the system here, the regulatory framework, or put them in touch with right people in the government to navigate so that they can understand the complexities of the system a little bit better. The actual uncertainty itself, though, it’s at very top levels of governments. It’ll be what it’ll be, and I think companies will figure it out. It’s a bit of a wait and see at the moment, and we’ll figure out what the world’s gonna look like from a policy standpoint and make the appropriate decisions from there.
Makes sense. And I know we’ve also seen a few supply chain challenges recently. In fact, in The US somehow all of our ports have decided that this was the year to strike. We saw it in Canada. We saw it in The US. How do you see that playing out going forward?
Well, again, the message around stable, certain logistics supply chains is so important for Alberta here in particular being landlocked. It’s so important for us to be able to move products. Not only just being landlocked, but also the majority of the products produced in this region are exported, so we need access to export markets. That uncertainty is a significant headwind for investment, especially from an international investor. So just being a voice there, of course, is the best that we can do and trying to really raise awareness that, look from an international standpoint, any hiccup or interruption to logistics supply chains and logistics to getting products to international markets, that would probably be a a strike against this region for an overall investment.
But it’s also temporary. Right? Those things have gotten resolved. Those are temporary blips in the system. And in fact, I spoke with Kevin Yttre, who’s a investment banker, a few weeks ago on The Chemical Show. And he really talked about The US being a very attractive market for Asian investors because they’re looking for secure and growing markets. I would assume the same is true in Canada. Are you seeing the same interest in international investment?
So for our region, absolutely. There’s a lot of interest from Asian companies primarily looking to invest in projects that would export products to their markets. There are some companies that wanna access North American markets and build a facility here and get a foothold into the North American markets. There’s some interest there too. But I’d say a lot of our interest from Asian customers or Asian clients and companies that are looking to build projects or look at petrochemical projects, I’d say the largest interest is building a facility in The Industrial Heartland and then moving that product to Asia from here. Now proximity and the connectivity from here is really attractive, more so than I’d say from the Gulf Coast in The US because getting our product to the West Coast, Port Of Prince Rupert, for example, that shipping time from the Port Of Prince Rupert into Japan, for example, that shipping time is about half than if you came out of the Gulf Coast, had to go down and then over. So we’ve got really good proximity to Asian markets from West Coast British Columbia, West Coast Of Canada. And we’ve got good rail connectivity to the West Coast. So we do have a lot of interest from Asian companies in looking at building facilities in The Industrial Heartland, moving product to meet the growing needs in Asian markets.
Yeah, that makes sense. And, again, as we talked about with the infrastructure, feedstock cost, skilled workforce, it becomes really cost effective as well to build and export.
Well, definitely. Clustering has advantages. There’s a skill set here. Some outputs from one become inputs to another. So when you have a bonafide cluster like you have in The Industrial Heartland and you have the connectivity like we have here, I think that gives a lot of confidence to foreign investors when they’re looking to invest. They see this is a functional cluster. World class companies operate here. There’s something going on here that we need to understand better.
So I know that you are gearing up for the Canadian Petrochemical Summit in June. And this is, I guess, the fourth time you guys have hosted this event, and it’s really an opportunity to showcase The Heartland and what it can do. So can you tell us just a little bit more about that event?
It’s a very focused Canadian petrochemical summit, but we’re really small group intended to really have the decision makers and key participants in the petrochemical sector. So that’ll be high value for them to be in such an intimate setting having discussions around petrochemical industry issues of the day, potential opportunities to work together, etcetera. So this year it’ll be in Lake Louise. It’s the first time we’re doing it out at Lake Louise. But it’s in the mountains, so think about the setting. Right?
You’ve got a fairly small focus group in the mountains. You’re there for two to three days. You’re not going anywhere from there. You’re doing some wonderful things out in the mountains. You’re either enjoying maybe some golf or hiking, etcetera, before the the conference happens. But it’s not like at the end of the afternoon, you’re going for dinner somewhere else. No. You’re all there at Lake Louise.
It’s very focused. It’s a great networking opportunity, really focused on having decision makers and participants in the petrochemical sector there. So that’s what this event is all about, and it’s in Lake Louise in in the June, June 17th to 19th.
I like that. Well and as you know, I’ve got my own conference that I run in the fall, The Chemical Summit, but different focus. Yet I also recognize the uniqueness of having a small event focused just on leaders and building those relationships, having the right conversations is so critical. Because it doesn’t necessarily happen a lot in our industry. A lot of the events are big dine and dash meet and greets where you’re running all day long. So having the opportunity to spend time together and connect and reflect and grow is really critical.
Yeah, both styles have a role for sure. We just find that this focused event specifically on petrochemicals, we think that’s adding value. In the end, we’re not in the conference business. We’re in the business of facilitating project development and helping companies advance projects. And so the end result is that.
We want companies to be able to connect and advance conversations and ideas, and so having a focus conference, we think, helps with that.
I know that the theme this year is navigating global markets. What can you tell us about the theme and some of the speakers or topics that people should expect?
Navigating global markets really just highlights that the petrochemical sector here, it is a global conversation, particularly with what we just talked about with some of the geopolitics. So the types of themes that we talk about and speakers we get in, we get experts. We usually start off with global market trends in the petrochemical sector and then drill down into specific feedstock outlooks in Western Canada and North America. Then there’s conversations around supply chain. We talked about some of the supply chain challenges. It’s always useful to have a conversation on geopolitics and world politics and get experts in on that. I think that’s interesting for some of the leaders that they listen to.
So, historically, we’ve had really good feedback. It’s a very valuable couple of days. And, so go to canadianpetrochemicalsummit.com to get more information.
Awesome. So final question for you, Mark. You have worked with a lot of global leaders, both in the public sector and in the private sector. What characteristics really stand out about a great leader?
I mean, business schools look at leadership all the time, and there’s courses on leadership. At least in my experience and first of all, let’s talk from personal experience and then from what I’ve seen. That leadership position, the first and foremost thing is you need to actually take a leadership position. Because in the absence of taking a leadership position, there’s a void, and then people fill that void with their own narratives. So before you say whether they’re a great leader, just to be a leader, that sounds trivial and maybe a little bit trite, but taking that leadership position where you’re out front saying this is how I think we need to go and get people to rally behind you. Taking that leadership position is first and foremost, whether you’re a great leader or not, the differences between what that leadership position is.
Are you doing it with integrity and conviction and driving that forward? So I guess from what I’ve seen, when I look at people that I’ve worked for who I think have been great leaders and who I’ve met have been great leaders is you’re driving that leadership position, but you’re doing so with integrity and conviction. You’re convincing people that you’re coming from the right place, and then you have the conviction to say that this is the way forward. Those two things coupled with that just stepping out front and being a leader is really important. I know it’s a bit of a circular conversation because in order to be a leader, you gotta take a leadership position, of course. But, you know, you’ve seen in politics in some cases where if you have a void, if you don’t have your leader coming forward and saying this, then there’s a void and others fill it.
This whole thing around owning your space. Yeah, you gotta own your space.
In business as well. You’re in a dynamic world. In my view, anyway, your leader needs to be communicating upfront that this is the position. You’ve got integrity and conviction, and then your workers and your company and everyone will see that. I’m gonna follow this because it’s coming from the right place. It’s got a conviction. And that’s at least off the top of my head what I’ve seen. I know that when I was initially put in the leadership roles.
I remember that being sort of the initial stress was something’s happened, and you need to be taking a leadership position upfront, and that’s the step you need to take. That was the first real big learning for me when I was put in my first leadership positions. Like, wait a sec. Okay. This is on me and I can’t wait for someone else. I’ve gotta be out front taking that position. And sure, you’re in conversation with people that you work with, but you’ve gotta be the one up front taking that position and with integrity and conviction.
That’s good. I really love that, though, and I think it’s great. First of all, the integrity and conviction are really critical. But to your point that making that switch into a leadership position, I used to sometimes tell people, it’s now your turn to define the work and the path. Like, we go along in our careers so long as being worker bees, if you will. Letting somebody else lead and set direction. And that first flip into a leadership role when it’s like, oh, no. I’m setting the direction is so critical.
People expect it of you, and that’s also how you define yourself.
It’s really interesting because until you’re put in that position, or at least for me, until I was put in that position, you don’t really think of it that way until you’re in it. For me in my career, I sort of had a pretty big jump into a leadership role in a foreign jurisdiction. So I’m now leading a foreign operation, and everyone’s looking to you, And you need to be upfront taking that position. I remember that specifically. It’s like, okay everyone’s looking to me to set direction, and you gotta step up and do it. So great leaders for me, you’re not leaving a void. You’re taking a leadership position with integrity and conviction to try things out.
I love it. I think it makes a lot of sense, and I know that’s what you do every day at The Heartland.
Well, hopefully my team thinks so.
I’m sure they do. I’ll ask them afterwards. Well, Mark, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining me on The Chemical Show.
Victoria, thanks for having me again, and I really appreciate the conversation.
Absolutely. And thank you everybody for listening. Keep listening. Keep following. Keep sharing, and we will talk again soon.
About Mark Plamondon:
Mark Plamondon is a seasoned business executive with over 25 years of experience and expertise regarding the management, operation, optimization and financial analysis of mineral processing operations. Mark possesses an engineering degree from the University of British Columbia and an MBA from the University of Alberta. As Executive Director of Alberta’s Industrial Heartland Association, Mark leads the organization’s business development strategy and works with his team to build and enhance relationships with investors, governments, and other stakeholders across the globe.