Calgary and Canada’s national defence is getting a much-needed boost with the creation of the Xpand Canada Commercialization Centre from ConvergX, which will connect defence partners with firms in a variety of different industries.

The goal is to connect defence industry problems with partners that have existing solutions, ranging from firms that are directly related to defence to other Canadian industries like energy, aerospace, mining, tech, agriculture, construction, manufacturing, health care, and even high performance motor sports.

Those industries have existing technologies that can assist in national defence, but don’t always speak the same language as the military or the defence industry said Kimberley Van Vliet, founder and CEO of ConvergX.

“It’s about not reinventing the wheel and making sure you’re thinking outside the box,” she said.

“You’re not going to go to a defence contractor for an energy solution, you’re going to go to our energy companies to find those solutions. So it’s about making sure that those barriers are broken down so that people can talk and get done what they need to get done.”

Van Vliet said that across Canada there are amazing hubs helping to incubate and accelerate ideas, and that Xpand would act as almost like a graduate program for those companies.

“As part of our Canadian delegation to the NATO Industrial Advisory Group, we’re already starting to get a lot of attention from our NATO allies and colleagues as to what we have to offer here in Canada. Not only from technology and innovation, but also from space to do testing and validation and experimentation,” she said.

Van Vliet said the model for Xpand would see a problem or need posed and then companies pulled into the programming to meet those needs.

“It could be a large corporation that has a problem or a solution that they’re looking to collaborate on, or it could even be an SME that has something that they’re looking to diversify or integrate. So they’ll be problem solutions set first, and we’ll be pulling those companies in,” she said.

Xpand gets private industry, federal, and municipal support

A total of $5.7 million is being invested into Xpand, with $2.7 million from Boeing Canada, $2 million from PrariesCan, and $1 million from the Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund (OCIF).

Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Al Meinzinger, President of Boeing Canada, said that the investment from the aerospace firm was a result of the Industrial Technological Benefits Program commitments made as part of the P8 Poseidon aircraft delivery contract for the Canadian Armed Forces.

“We see the possibilities and the potential that the Xpand platform will provide the ability to bring companies together, companies that are already well along in advancing their technology. It’s the one plus one equals four, sort of reality,” he said.

“We’re excited to invest in this platform. We see it as good for Canada, and down the road, potentially, we might want to leverage this new network to achieve an outcome that might be part of our needs at the time. So, it’s really an investment in the future.”

He said that Xpand could eventually be used to support Boeing customers across Canada, in addition to the Canadian Armed Forces.

“Working collaboratively with our customers to develop a future capability could be an idea that we would see unfold. I think there’s tremendous potential here in the province, and we’re certainly very much drawn to the purpose and the objective of ConvergX and Xpand,” said Meinzinger.

The $1 million investment from OCIF will be applied over three years. said Brad Parry, CEO Of Calgary Economic Development and OCIF.

“Our job is from Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund is to really set the environment to allow innovators to flourish, innovation to happen, and this kind of investment is going to allow us to do that,” he said.

“For us, the biggest opportunity is as a commercialization hub, which means it’s further down the path it’s not just a startup. It’s where we can actually build companies that have product market fits and help them get new clients in a more efficient way.”

He said that the investment from OCIF was in line with other investments that OCIF had made over the past several years into industry hubs in Calgary.

“We see opportunity to cross collaborate, whether it’s agriculture, whether it’s life sciences, whether it’s cyber security or quantum there’s a massive opportunity for us to be able to connect these ideas and technologies and transfer them to multiple sectors,” said Parry.