A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held in Saint John Wednesday to mark the opening of a call centre planning to hire between 400 and 500 employees.
Premier Brian Gallant was on hand for the opening of S&P Data, a company now with a workforce of 160 people in east Saint John.
The staff is expected to double between now and the summer.
"We're excited about where we are and where we're going,” says S&P Data president Bian Cato. “We're looking to get there even faster now than originally planned."
The company is inside the Loch Lomond Mall where the former Sears Canada call centre was located. That call centre lasted less than a year, though officials say that turn of events doesn’t reflect the call centre industry.
"The sector itself is strong. There's going to be turnover. There's going to be companies coming and going. But we have over 18,000 people in the sector," says Stephen Lund, CEO of Opportunities New Brunswick.
Premier Gallant says his government's job creation approach works, most of the time.
"When we work on 10 files, we'll have seven, eight or nine delivered. But we will have one that doesn't work out,” he says. “What's important is that we protect taxpayers’ money on every single one of the files that we're working on, and that's what we did with Sears. That's what we're going here."
The new company will be receiving taxpayer assistance of more than $3 million if it lives up to the promise of creating 450 jobs.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Mike Cameron.
