Expansion complete
$4.5M project broke ground last summer in Harbourside Business Park in Sydney
Protocase Inc. promising to boost business.
SYDNEY – The $4.5-million expansion of Protocase Inc.’s building two is expected to pay dividends with a jump in business from its aerospace and defence sector clients, says company president and CEO Steve Lilley.
Protocase employees, suppliers and shareholders celebrated the completion of the building’s 10,000 square foot expansion on Wednesday. The building’s total square footage is now approximately 23,500.
Besides providing a larger footprint allowing employees “space to breathe,” Lilley said it will grow the business beyond just providing products to the labs and product development teams of clients such as Boeing, Halliburton and NASA.
“We wanted to get more involved in the actual equipment they are building and putting out in the field; (it) required us to move into a new level of quality assurance,” he said.
Protocase received its AS 9100D certification in September 2017. It’s a widely adopted and standardized quality management system for the aerospace industry.
The company also holds the ISO 9001:2015 accreditation that requires a company to consistently provide products and services that meet customer needs and regulatory requirements.
“We’ve been audited twice and passed with flying colours, so we’re a fully aerospace and defence registered company. We can make product that goes on rockets, in tanks, on aircraft. That opened up opportunities for us,” said Lilley.
The manufacturing floors run on two shifts a day, six days a week. Lilley said Protocase is reaching a point where it could soon become a 24-hour-a-day operation.
Founded in 2000, Protocase now boasts more than 200 fulltime employees.
Built as a company that turns sheet metal into electronic metal enclosures, brackets and machine parts and its sister company, 45 Drives, which primarily manufactures large-scale data storage servers, there’s a move beyond sheet metal work and into the world of computer numerical control (CNC) machining. It employs a variety of machines and tools that produce custom-designed parts and products.
“These customers were saying to us, ‘if you guys can get your business model to work in CNC machining like you do in sheet metal work, we can throw a lot of work your way,’” Lilley said.
Even though he won’t discuss annual revenue figures, Lilley said year-over-year growth is running at about 30 per cent.
The building is set up assembly line-style with each work station tasked with a different job. There’s about 100 people working in the facility on a daily basis.
The raw material enters the building from the south entrance. Starting with laser cutting of the sheet metal the product being produced is built and moved through the building to the expanded north section where it’s packaged and shipped via FedEx.
The highlight of the expansion is the amount of natural light pouring in through the windows.
Advanced Glazings Ltd. of Sydney manufactures the Solera Wall window used in the expansion project. The frameless window pane is the newest in the Solera line of products and offers a ninefoot strip of translucent window panes around the perimeter of the building extension.
Doug Milburn, co-founder and vice-president of sales and marketing at Protocase, is also the co-founder and chairman at Advanced Glazings.
In its early days, a handful of Protocase employees worked out of a side bay at the Advanced Glazings facility.
There have been several Protocase expansions over the years including one of the more recent ones — the purchase of the former Co-op store on Prince Street that is now home to 45 Drives.
Milburn said lighting in a building “colours” a person’s perspective of it.
“Bright, open, clean. You’re working on parts with fine detail. It’s just a nice space to be in,” he said.
“(The other) end — that’s the liquid air building from the old steel plant. A conventional steel building, we love it, not saying anything bad about it. It’s our home but you can get the difference in the light between the two places.”
The Solera line allows for unique Aerogel R-18 units to provide four times the insulation of commercial standard “high performance” glass units, according to Advanced Glazings.
Lilley said options are being considered for the addition of Solera windows to the original section of Protocase building two.
They are also contemplating installing the Solera Wall panels to Protocase building one located nearby within the Harbourside Business Park.
The expansion project was financed through its bank as well as a $1-million loan from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency’s business development program.