One good Waterloo Region company deserves another. Or, framed another way, there’s nothing quite like having a trusted friend in the right places.
Nemko Canada Inc., a division of Nemko AS, an 85-year-old product testing and certification firm headquartered in Oslo, Norway, Thursday announced it is moving into Waterloo Region, cutting the ribbon on a new 10,000-square-foot facility in Cambridge.
It’s doing so in large part thanks to its three-year-old partnership with Kitchener startup Swift Labs.
Swift Labs is a four-year-old company with 27 employees. It specializes in wireless and IoT product development, design and engineering. In 2015, Swift Labs began partnering on work with Nemko, which, with 500 employees worldwide and 2016 revenue of CDN$92 million, provides testing, inspection, certification and market access services, primarily for IoT, telecom, audio/video, medical and household products.
“It’s a win-win for both companies and this region,” says Lara Swift, Swift Labs’ COO and co-founder.
The two companies work symbiotically. Swift Labs typically will help a customer design and engineer a product, and then it works with Nemko for product testing and certification.
“It’s very complementary how our two companies work together,” says Swift. “We do design and engineering of a product, and when that product is ready to go market, we’ve already discussed with Nemko what the certifications are that the product needs and what the lab requirements will be for testing. Then we’ll work with Nemko on a schedule to meet the customer’s deadlines and basically [assist] them though the Nemko process to get their certifications so their product is ready to go to market.”
A Swift Labs technician at work on a product. (Communitech photo: Sara Jalali)
Nemko’s lab, which will initially house five engineers, sales and service personnel, will allow both companies to provide improved customer service and hands-on attention.
“It’s all about serving local customers,” says Nemko Group President and CEO Svein Ola Ulven.
“[There’s] a broad customer base here that creates potential for us. In the field in which we operate, it’s quite crucial to be close to the customer. If the customer wants to join in when we do the testing, wants to debug, the proximity is quite important.”
“Swift have been instrumental in getting the name Nemko out to the region.”
In addition to the proximity to Swift Labs’ office and customers, the decision by Nemko to open a shop in Cambridge was based on the local talent pool, growth in the region’s tech sector, and proximity to the 401. Nemko has other Canadian offices in Ottawa and Montreal.
“We’ve known for years this region was of key interest to us,” says Sim Jagpal, Nemko’s Ottawa-based Canadian General Manager. “We’re very familiar with the KW region. It’s a strategic opportunity to be in the 401 corridor.”
Both Swift Labs and Nemko leverage the other’s expertise to grow their businesses. Both expect to accelerate growth with Nemko in the region.
“Nemko’s philosophy is to build our business with partnerships,” says Grant Schmidbauer, Nemko’s Senior Vice-President for North America. “We know we can’t go out and conquer the world and buy everybody up but we’d like to grow our company. We need to find win-win partnerships. That’s what Swift has demonstrated over the last few years.”
In anticipation of growth, and to leverage its Nemko partnership, Swift Labs will shortly move into a new facility of its own. At the end of July it will trade its 4,000-square-foot facility at 22 Frederick St. for 12,000 square feet in the giant Catalyst 137 IoT facility on Glasgow St. in Kitchener.
“When a lab like Nemko makes a move, they move quickly, swiftly, so to speak, and they add credibility to the services we were providing,” says Swift Labs co-founder and CEO Anthony Middleton.
“[Our work with Nemko] is an extension of their brand and we take that very seriously.”
