If North Bay is known as the gateway to the North, then ICAMP should be crowned the gateway to Northern Ontario industry.
While the importance of ICAMP in the Northern Ontario manufacturing and economic development landscape cannot be emphasized enough, it’s also opening doors for the regional industry at large and introducing them to collaborators from throughout the country.
Take for instance a few companies from Southern Ontario, who, before serendipitously stumbling upon ICAMP, were oblivious to the powerful potential that the shared facility possesses.
This phenomenon is placing Northern Ontario’s innovative experts on a pedestal for the rest of the country to see and bringing the inherent expertise to the forefront of leading industry.
Encaladus Imaging Inc. of Toronto, for example, is a company specializing in vision solutions for industrial automation problems by delivering real world engineering solutions.
Prior to their relationship with ICAMP, Encaladus’ software products remained in the strict and specific domain of advanced image processing algorithms for industrial robotic welding applications.
Their products typically interact with very hot and harsh environments that could damage their products. But, as the company’s CEO Kalin Ovtcharov explained, his team didn’t have the knowledge, manpower or capability to design the appropriate enclosure hardware to protect their product.
Enter ICAMP.
“They had the hardware design expertise that we needed, so we worked with them for up to nine weeks to design the enclosure to spec,” said Ovtcharov. “Now that ICAMP was able to design this enclosure for us, we can actually sell our new product directly to the end users, to the manufacturing plants that are looking to automate.”
Since that project, Ovtcharov’s startup has been able to open up to an entirely new market and grow their business in ways they hadn’t even imagined at first.
Before discovering ICAMP, the company’s options were limited, which brought the project to a halt before it even began.
“We approached several other companies and I either got a very slow response or it was just far too expensive or they had a lack of expertise,” Ovtcharov said. “ICAMP was absolutely the right choice though; they executed on everything we asked them to do and it was a very positive experience.
“I did not expect that level of expertise to come from Northern Ontario, but it was a pleasant surprise,” he admitted. “There are a lot of shops here that can offer contract manufacturing, but ICAMP had the whole package and that’s what convinced me that they were the right ones to do it.”
Encaladus’ collaboration with ICAMP has had a wealth of other organic benefits that continue to help the company advance as well.
Since their first partnership, a new company has approached ICAMP in need of extraordinary advanced vision expertise for their product. But in lacking that specific knowledge, ICAMP has referred the company to Ovtcharov and Encaladus as their provider for advanced imaging solutions.
“The company that’s looking to build a new product does not have the vision experience, so if they didn’t have this network that they can tap into, it may be difficult for them to execute,” said Ovtcharov. “ICAMP’s network can definitely be key to that success.
“It’s almost like a community-run network of companies and small businesses that are looking to new technologies to help them grow,” the entrepreneur added.
In a region that is often the victim of adverse growth forecasts, Canadore and ICAMP have leapt into the leadership role and intervened with their innovative model.
With their exceptional expertise, ICAMP is continuing to connect, promote and open doors for Northern Ontario’s innovation masterminds.
“I think ICAMP is really a great facility with a passionate set of people and I’ve had a really fun time working with them,” Ovtcharov concluded. “They offer incredible value to Northern Ontario.”
