A vacant farm-supply store in Humboldt, Saskatchewan is about to become one of the most consequential buildings in the province's push to staff the world's largest potash mine.
Carlton Trail College, BHP and the Government of Saskatchewan are jointly funding the conversion of the former Peavey Mart at 10225 8th Avenue into the BHP Technical Training Centre, a 22,725-square-foot facility designed to train workers for the region's booming mining, manufacturing, agriculture and health care sectors. Renovations are set to begin this summer, with the centre scheduled to open in fall 2027.
The timing is deliberate. BHP's Jansen Potash Mine, located roughly an hour east of Humboldt, is expected to ship its first ore in late 2026 and will eventually employ around 600 permanent workers at Stage 1 alone. The company has committed more than US$10 billion across two stages of development, making Jansen the largest potash project on earth and reshaping the labor market for every community within commuting distance. Humboldt, a city of about 6,000 that serves as the regional service hub, sits squarely in that zone.
Source: NationGraph.
The workforce math is stark. Saskatchewan already faces some of Canada's tightest skilled-trades labor markets, and BuildForce Canada has projected tens of thousands of trades vacancies nationally in the years ahead. The province's own growth plan targets a population of 1.4 million by 2030, driven largely by mining expansion, but that ambition requires training pipelines that currently don't exist at sufficient scale.
Enter the Peavey Mart building. The Canadian farm-and-ranch chain filed for receivership and closed all its stores in early 2025, leaving a large retail shell sitting empty in a community that needs industrial training space. Carlton Trail College, whose main campus is in Humboldt, is now repurposing that footprint into flexible classrooms and labs that can adapt as training needs evolve.
The college has posted an RFP for a construction management firm to oversee the renovation, with work expected to start immediately upon contract award. The specific construction budget has not been disclosed publicly.
When the centre opens, it will serve students from Humboldt and the surrounding rural municipalities, giving a small prairie city a direct role in supplying labor for one of Canada's most watched industrial projects.
