Energizing business growth

Starting with around 20 employees in 2002 and working only with Cameco and Orano in northern Saskatchewan, Athabasca Basin Security (ABS) has now grown to 250 employees across Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia and Manitoba – with a dream of spreading across Canada.

“It’s an exciting time for us. When I started working here, we sat and dreamed what we wanted to do. We had this big dream to move across all Canada. It was a challenge to do it. We came up with this model we believe in," CEO Sascha Sasbrink Harkema says.

ABS is one of the Athabasca businesses Cameco and Orano continued to prioritize in 2023 in accordance with the terms of the Ya’Thi Néné Collaboration Agreement. Cameco currently contracts ABS at Rabbit Lake and Cigar Lake with a total of nine workers between the two operations.

These partnerships support industry goals to help northern businesses become fully supported and self-sustaining contractors to build capacity for the future.

"The business relationships in the Athabasca Basin we have developed over the years have returned so many mutual benefits to northerners and Cameco. We are very pleased to see local business growth and glad to have been a part of it," says Kristin Cuddington, Director, Community & Indigenous Engagement.

ABS primarily provides industrial security and medical services to mine sites. Their business model hinges on two elements – providing employment to people in the communities near mine sites and sharing revenues with those communities.

A lot of Indigenous people must leave their communities to go to work, Sasbrink Harkema says, but working for ABS they come home and spend their earnings locally.

She says the company’s early business with Cameco was key to helping it grow.

“They gave us that support from the beginning and elevated us to believe we could go further.”