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By Ashley Lavallee-Koenig

DAVID AND GOLIATH

Red Deer company shoring up Arctic defence through multi-million dollar contract

Mar 17, 2025 | 12:14 PM

A Red Deer company has been awarded a $6.98 million defence contract to provide Canada with top-of-the-line radar technology for securing our Arctic.

The contract was granted to ATCO Frontec Ltd., Inuvialuit Development Corporation in joint venture as the primary contractor for $48.4 million, who has sub-contracted Technalogix, a local company, to contribute to the project.

This agreement will carry out Phase Four of the Polar Over-The-Horizon-Radar (POTHR) project, an effort to modernize our North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and improve detection abilities in the north.

“Our equipment would be the first warning of any aviation vehicle that is over top of our sovereign airspace. We are the ones that will see it and we are the ones that will give the position, the velocity and the tracking over to our Royal Air Force,” explained Thomas King, Technalogix COO.

King added, the project is set to be the largest deployment of this type of radar in the world and will act as Canada’s “first line of defence” against threats coming from the north.

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Technalogix will be building the amplifiers for this radar, which King explains will act like its engine.

The benefit of this type of radar comes from its range. Robert Gullon, Technalogix president and CEO, explained that most radio frequency signals travel in a relatively straight line; by bouncing the signals off of the ionosphere, as this radar does, you eliminate the impact of the Earth’s curvature and “vastly” extend its detection range.

This investment has prompted the company to open up four new positions: two in manufacturing to meet the demands of the contract; one testing position; and one position in its metal shop, which the company is now able to grow further.

With tensions between Canada and the U.S. running high during an escalating trade war, King called the investment into a fully Canadian company such as themselves “paramount.”

About half of Technalogix’s business comes from supplying amplifiers and receivers to support television and radio, about 85 per cent of which is serviced in the U.S., King said.

“With these tariffs, we would see a vast majority of those customers either holding off or going with an American manufacturer,” he shared. “We really viewed this trade war as extremely detrimental to our business and to our exports. With that being said, I do believe that the trade war has actually helped our government give this contract to a fully Canadian solution.”

Technalogix’s main competitors for the bid were multibillion dollar American-owned companies, which it was able to beat out despite having only 13 employees due to it being “the only fully Canadian solution for radar installations in the world,” said King.

For David to defeat this Goliath, King added, the company chose to assume some risk and started development about six months or so before they knew they’d secured the contract.

“We assumed that risk on our own,” said King. “We proved it to our partners, we proved it to our customer, and we think that’s a big reason why we won as well.”

Technalogix will be supplying the project with 288 amplifiers. To meet the demands of the contract, King said the company may need to “farm out” some components, or their regular product work, to other local metalworking shops, creating a trickle down impact on the local economy.

Gullon added, the company also mentors students attending Red Deer Polytechnic (RDP), NAIT and SAIT, and is authorized to administer the four years of training that would secure an engineering licence. For example, King said the open testing position is being advertised on RDP job boards and students applicants will be given preference, as it’s a fitting entry position for engineering, computer science or similar students.

Overall, Gullon said the investment into Technalogix proves that the drive of a company matters more than its size.

“It doesn’t matter how small a company you are; if you have vision and you find the right people to help you achieve those goals, you can do anything. We don’t have a product, essentially, we have people that help us build our dreams: that’s what we do,” he reflected.

Technalogix was formally awarded the contract on March 5 and has previously worked with the Department of Defence for about six or seven years. The contract terminates at the end of 2027.

The company has been operating for more than 30 years and was founded by Gullon, who lives in Sylvan Lake. It began as Sylvan Satellite Systems in 1990, before it purchased the Technalogix name in 2004.

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