Executive of Year appointed to the Thunder Bay Port Authority

OTTAWA, Ont. —  Emilio F. Rigato, an Executive of the Year Award winner,  has been appointed to the board of directors of the Thunder Bay Port Authority for a three year term.

Rigato, who won the Executive of the Year Award – Northern Ontario Business Awards for his entrepreneurial excellence in 1995, is a professional engineer with a long career in managing people, projects and finances. Since 2010, he has been the president of ESLB Enterprises Inc., a business consulting firm in Thunder Bay, and is currently a consultant and capital project manager of a cogeneration project in Northern Ontario. From 2002 to 2010. Rigato was project manager for both the Algoma Steel cogeneration project in Sault Ste. Marie, and a coated paper project in the Gaspé Peninsula. Prior to that, he was a mill operations manager responsible for the operations, staff and finances for several companies, and a corporate manager for mill projects in Ontario, Quebec and Washington State.

Rigato started his career as a mill plant engineer in 1973.

He was involved in various organisations in his community of Thunder Bay, serving as an executive secretary for the Da Vinci Centre, as a member on the board of directors of the Northwestern Ontario Innovation Centre, and as a founding member of the Ambassadors North West. He also served as a member of the Engineering Review Board at Queen’s University in Kingston and on the Northern Ontario School of Medicine’s Advancement Committee.

The Thunder Bay Port Authority is the Canada Port Authority (CPA) established to manage the Port of Thunder Bay under the Canada Marine Act. Eighteen CPAs now make up Canada’s national port system. The CPAs are non-share capital corporations incorporated under the Canada Marine Act and are of strategic significance to Canada’s trade. Their effective operation contributes to Canada’s global competitiveness as a trading nation.