After enduring years of slowdown in the energy sector, and the COVID-19 pandemic, the HyGrade Industrial Park is beginning to see a rebound.
The Industrial area was booming just a few short years ago, however as oil and gas prices dropped, there was an understandable exodus from the area. It appears that is turning around.
One bright sign is the former Baker Hughes shop has been purchased by Flomax Compression. Baker Hughes pulled out of Drumheller in the spring of 2014.
“We think it is a good area and community to grow in, and we do work all over the province out of Drumheller,” said Dennis Sax of Flomax Compression.

Flomax is locally owned and has operated in Drumheller since 2003. They started in Munson, and now have an office in the Hygrade Industrial Park and now the former Baker Hughes facility. They employ about 40 locally and also have an office in Drayton Valley.
“We have loyal customers who support us locally and around the province,” said Sax.
He says the company is diversifying and has branched into power generation, and the new facility will support this.
“We do power generation for gas plants, industrial and commercial products. We supply co-gen units. We just sold one to a chicken processing plant, and we have sold quite a few generators for Bitcoin, data processing centres,” explains Sax. “As oil and gas gets tougher, we have diversified into other areas, but oil and gas is still our bread and butter.”
Bob Sheddy of Century 21 Power Realty said the area saw as high as a 21 per cent vacancy after the oil and gas crash. Today, it is back to about 5 per cent vacancy with a variety of different businesses taking up stakes in the industrial area.
“There have been four significant deals in the industrial park in the last three months,” said Sheddy. “We have sold buildings to farmers, and for automotive uses, and of course light manufacturing and the industrial park is now quite full. You’ll still see some blank signs out there, but that is just because the occupant isn’t open for retail traffic.”
Drumheller CAO Darryl Drohomerski is encouraged by the turnaround.
“We are super happy with what we are seeing in the industrial park. We are seeing a lot more vacancies being filled and we are also seeing land being sold in the Rosedale industrial area,” said Drohomerski.

Police remind residents the best way to protect themselves from prowlers is to secure their property.
This comes after a rash of prowlings in a Nacmine neighbourhood last week. Corporal Gerald Sherk tells the Mail there were about five reports last Monday evening.
“We are quite sure there were more than that as far as vehicles that were gone through, it is just that you don’t know unless something is actually missing or if they left a mess behind them that you would know someone was in that vehicle,” said Sherk.
In these instances, the cars were left open.
“The right thing to do is keep your vehicle locked, keep valuables out of sight, don’t keep valuable things in your car if you don’t need to, then there is no reason or someone to go into your vehicle.
He says these are crimes of opportunity.
“This was common at my former posting in Whitehorse, almost a nightly occurrence. It is usually one person or a small group of opportunistic thieves. If there is a reason to go into your vehicle like open change, and your vehicle is unlocked, there is no real prevention to stopping them.”
“It is not often they will actually break into a vehicle unless it is actually worth the risk of being caught. Once they start smashing things it attracts attention.”
On top of securing your property, he says it is also important to let the police know, even if it was minor and very little property has been taken.
“There are times a neighbour down the street may have good surveillance and we are able to identify someone and move ahead with a charge, but we won’t know if you haven’t reported it to us we won’t know you are also a victim. If there is any loss from you, we won’t know where to return items that are not specifically unique.”