Company looks to place a bet on its future

Williams and White Machine Inc. has history on its side, but it’s thinking about tomorrow. A third-generation family business, the Burnaby, B.C.-based company was founded in 1957 by the grandfather of current chief executive officer Justin Williams.

Mr. Williams oversees three divisions. The oldest and biggest is a manufacturing shop offering services that range from computer numerical control (CNC) machining to fabrication and welding. The manufacturing equipment branch builds machinery for clients such as sawmills. Automation, the smallest and newest division, includes an industrial robotics venture called Remtech Systems.

Business is good for privately held Williams and White, which states its annual revenue as between $5-million and $10-million. In the past two years the company has almost doubled in size, to about 45 employees from 25. “We’ve found areas that were growing,” Mr. Williams says, pointing to mining in particular. “The guys in the mining sector had a really good tear the last few years.”

One of the company’s biggest challenges is how best to use its capital. “There’s a limited resource of funds,” Mr. Williams explains. The manufacturing shop accounts for much of the company’s revenue, but Mr. Williams notes that each piece of big machinery costs about $1-million. “The machine shop probably has a limited amount of growth that it can have, just because it’s such a capital-intensive business.”

In the equipment division, research and development is the main expense. Williams and White spent several hundred thousand dollars on a recent R&D project. “We’re very bullish on it,” says Mr. Williams, an electrical engineer by training. “We think we’ve developed a technology that’s game-changing, but it definitely takes a capital-intensive investment.”

Then there’s robotics, which could be the future – or maybe not. This business started to take off only in the past two years. So far, Williams and White has sold about 20 robots to customers in B.C. and Alberta that include manufacturers and postsecondary institutions.

Although automation has the highest personnel and training costs of the three divisions, it tends to require less capital. But Mr. Williams thinks educating potential customers about robotics would call for a costly marketing effort with no guaranteed results. “Machining tends to be a bit safer,” he says. “Whereas with the marketing, it’s an investment, of course, but it could pay nothing.”

So, where to invest for the future? “It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, put it where it’s making the most amount of money,’” Mr. Williams says. “But that’s not always the most forward-looking way of approaching it. Because something that makes money today might not be the best thing to invest in for tomorrow.”

Murata Machinery's automated turning centers will now be available even more widely in the central United States with the addition of Technical Equipment Sales as a CNC machine tool dealer for the Muratec brand in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky.

“We couldn't be happier about this new partnership,” said Steve Landrum, Sales Manager at Murata's Turning Division. “Technical Equipment offers decades of experience selling machining products, a stellar reputation in the industry, and a strong core of customers we're eager to work with.”

Technical Equipment Sales was founded in 1952, narrowed their focus to CNC machine tool technology in 1982, and were acquired in 1992 by Morris Group, Inc., “the largest fully integrated supplier of machine tools and related engineering and support services in North America,” according to the company website.