Burnaby portable-shelter-maker Weatherhaven announced October 24 that it has signed a licensing agreement that will serve a “significant” part of the U.S. market.
The partnership with AAR Corp. relates to Weatherhaven’s hardwall expandable redeployable containers and could spur sales to the U.S. government.
AAR, which is a large aerospace and defence company, will have the right to market as well as manufacture the Weatherhaven containers for all services and agencies within the U.S. departments of defence, homeland security and justice.
Weatherhaven’s container system design received a U.S. patent in May 2012. It enables two four-foot-wide containers to be connected and shipped as a single eight-foot container footprint. When the walls are fully expanded, the units create 800 square feet of shelter, or more than five times the floor space of the original shipping footprint.
Weatherhaven CEO Ray Castelli told Business in Vancouver in August that he aimed to use his company’s successful bid on a $130 million federal government contract to promote international sales.
The recent contact win for Weatherhaven was part of a combined bid with Ontario’s DEW Engineering to win a contract to provide mobile shelters for the Canadian military.
Weatherhaven planned to add 20 B.C. employees to its current 100 staff in the province. Worldwide, Weatherhaven employs 160 people and has tripled its staff in the past five years.
“We’ve gone from being a company that had $20 million in sales five years ago to one that had $60 million in sales last year,” Castelli told BIV.
