The Isthmus of Avalon
The Isthmus region is located between the Avalon Peninsula and the rest of Newfoundland. It includes communities such as Arnold's Cove, Come By Chance, Long Harbour, Sunnyside, Goobies, and Chapel Arm. All communities in the region are close to the Trans Canada Highway. Due in part to this transportation access, the Isthmus region is often thought of as the industrial heartland of our province and is home to some of the province's largest industrial developments, including the North Atlantic Refinery in Come By Chance, the Vale Nickel Processing Facility in Long Harbour, and the Bull Arm Fabrication Site. Fish harvesting, processing, and aquaculture also take place in the region and a world-class transshipment facility at Whiffen Head.
Dr's. Alvin Simms and Rob Greenwood of Memorial University have written extensively on a number of social influences impacting the economy of rural Newfoundland communities. From an economic perspective, Simms and Greenwood write that "rural NL is a resource extraction-based economy with very little secondary processing". They say, "only three large secondary manufacturing plants are located in the province: the paper mill in Corner Brook, the Oil Refinery in Come By Chance, and the Nickel Processing Plant in Long Harbour".
The Isthmus of Avalon Region - A Promising Industrial Hub on the Island of NL
Our region hosts two of the three large secondary manufacturing plants in all of Newfoundland and Labrador benefiting from downstream processing resulting from resource extraction.
In fact, the recent PERT report points to the Vale Nickel Processing Plant at Long Harbour as an example of a low-carbon producing plant in the mining and mineral production sector because of its use of hydroelectricity as its energy source. Couple this with the potential represented by the world-class fabrication facility at Bull Arm, the transshipment facility at Whiffen Head, the ongoing economic impacts of the fish harvesting and processing, the expanding aquaculture industry, as well as the potential for LNG and Wind Energy developments, the Isthmus of Avalon Region of the Province promises to be a major net contributor to the Provincial GDP for some time.