According to the May 4, 2012 Abakan, Inc. press release on BusinessWire,
Due to the prevalent favorable conditions to set up operations in Alberta, Canada, Abakan Inc.’s (otcqb:ABKI) Board of Directors has decided to locate a collaborative research and development center for wear resistant materials in Alberta, Canada. …
Upon initiation of Alberta operations under subsidiary MTC Corporation (Mesocoat Technologies Canada Corporation), Abakan will collaborate with the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT), and the Alberta Innovates Technology Futures’ (AITF) advanced materials team and infrastructure. MTC Corporation will leverage Alberta’s world-class research institutes to reduce technical execution risk and accelerate the development, validation, and market entry of MesoCoat’s revolutionary, low cost and high performance nanocomposite materials and high productivity cladding process into the oil sands, mining and mineral processing industries in Alberta and elsewhere.
…
The Alberta location offers significant growth opportunities for MesoCoat; with announced capital investments in the oil sands industry due to triple production in the next four years markets for wear resistant materials are also expected to grow proportionately from $350M/year to over $1B/year. MesoCoat’s CermaClad technology offers the highest productivity and lowest life cycle cost of any application technology in the market today. MesoCoat’s CermaClad technology offers the ability to produce high-quality weld overlays 15-40X faster, and with dramatically improved microstructures and performance compared to legacy weld overlay processes. MTC Corporation’s Alberta development activities will accelerate the commercial readiness of MesoCoat’s low cost nanocomposite overlay materials, which in laboratory testing have shown 3X lower wear rate than current available overlay products at comparable cost structures.
I haven’t found any announcements from government (provincial [Alberta] or federal [Canada]) agencies, which is a bit surprising. They are usually very happy to take some credit for attracting business.
You can find more about Abakan here and about MesoCoat here.