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A Newfoundland and Labrador company is lighting up each of the Royal Canadian Navy’s six Arctic and Offshore Patrol Ships (AOPS) under construction at Halifax Shipyard.
Glamox Inc. (Canada), based in Mount Pearl, NL, is the primary supplier and manufacturer of lighting on all the Royal Canadian Navy’s vessels in use today and is continuing to shine by providing full ship lighting packages for each AOPS, including the navigation lights.
Most of the lighting fixtures onboard each AOPS will be state of the art marine LED. The lighting is designed and manufactured to withstand the harsh environmental conditions an AOPS could encounter, and to be maintenance free and easy to install. Glamox’s LED products have innovative heat management designs, integrated chip drivers, superior sealed units, high-end LEDs specifically selected for quality, uniformity in light output and colour rendering properties.
Glamox’s 23 multi-skilled employees, with an average length of service of 20+ years, fabricate the lights in their new 20,000 square foot facility in Mount Pearl, the second-largest city in Newfoundland and Labrador, and located adjacent to St. John’s. The company relocated to their new facility in January 2019 in order to expand their manufacturing and production space to better service their customers throughout North America and worldwide.
The company’s work on the AOPS program provides a predictable base workload over the next several years, which provides a foundation for growth. With their new facility in full production, Glamox is planning to add a few new employees to their team in 2019 and will work with local colleges and universities to provide on the job training and work opportunities.
Glamox has over 30 years of experience providing lighting solutions and support to both the Royal Canadian Navy and the US Navy. The company is part of the Glamox Group, a global leader in marine and offshore lighting solutions, supplying lighting products to many Navies worldwide such as the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, and India.
“We believe that the National Shipbuilding Strategy program is extremely important for Canadian companies. For a company like ours, we provide Canadian produced solutions with a 100% Canadian workforce. When we are successful in these projects, it not only ensures that we can keep our production facility running at a good capacity while fully retaining our workforce, it also means we can support our Canadian fleets from within Canada for the foreseeable future. Having an initiative that plots out a Canadian new-building program over the next 15-20+ years allows companies to work on strategies to position themselves to be part of the program. The more Canadian companies that are successful, then the more the National Shipbuilding Strategy program is successful.” Damian Coleman, Sales Manager, Glamox Inc. (Canada).
Irving Shipbuilding has committed over $2.5 billion in spending to more than 300 Canadian organizations as part of the National Shipbuilding Strategy, including more than $10 million in Newfoundland and Labrador.
According to the Conference Board of Canada, Halifax Shipyard’s facility modernization and the building of six AOPS for the Royal Canadian Navy is expected to boost economic activity across Canada by $3.42 billion between 2013 and 2022.
