For Brukar Inc., 2026 promises to be a year of exceptional growth, both in Canada and overseas. Due to customer demand in North America, the company will renovate its existing 20,000-square-foot Oakville, Ontario-based warehouse and head office, to increase capacity by 400 percent. Additionally, company President Charles Gagnon was recently in India for the grand opening of the company’s second factory, with plans to expand to a third facility in the country in 2027, employing over 250 employees in Bangalore. “The new facility in India will enable continued growth for our CNC machining operation as well as provide the space needed to add to our capabilities, including the manufacture of stamped and formed sheet metal components.”
The company, which works with about 75 suppliers around the world, previously operated primarily as a sourcing partner to their global OEM customers, and now with their vertically integrated manufacturing capabilities, operates as a true manufacturing partner, often providing customers with value adding engineering services as well.
A growing global footprint
Founded in 1985, Brukar has become a well-known contract manufacturer of metal components including precision castings, prototypes, machined parts, weldments, forgings, assemblies, and stamped/formed sheet metal components. Along with comprehensive contract manufacturing and supply chain services for North American OEM customers, Brukar offers procurement consolidation, design and engineering, quality assurance, and inventory solutions. These services are used by clients spanning a wide variety of industries to purchase custom metal components manufactured at low costs overseas without the headaches associated with managing overseas suppliers and supply chains. The company’s Oakville, Ontario warehouse provides a local inventory solution to customers, allowing them to keep product off their balance sheets until needed, freeing up valuable cash flow to allocate to their own strategic operations.
“Through communication with some of our larger multinational customers, it has become clear that there is a need for a service offering like Brukar’s in the European market,” says Gagnon. Because of this, the company is excited to be in the planning stages of opening a European office and warehouse from whence they will support new and existing European customers in the same way they have their North American customers for the past 40 years.
Like many other Canadian-based companies, Brukar is also faced with what Gagnon calls “Policy by Tweet.” In 2025 alone, the company navigated through 55 changes to tariff policies affecting their components. With the recent news of trade deals being reached between India and the European Union as well as India and the United States, the company is well positioned to continue increasing their market share for overseas contract manufacturing of metal components.
Family-owned and female-founded
Last March, Brukar Inc. proudly celebrated its 40th anniversary. The timing saw Gagnon take over from his mother, company founder Carolyn Cross. An experienced global businesswoman, Cross had been conducting business between Asia and Canada for years when she realized that there was a void between world class manufacturers of metal components and the North American OEMs looking for lower cost components.
For the first 25 years, Brukar didn’t warehouse any product and was strictly a sourcing agent, with Cross connecting customers to suppliers capable of making the components. Eventually, the company started offering warehousing and managing the complete supply chain of goods. This allowed customers to significantly reduce the minimum order quantities typically associated with buying overseas, and take components as needed from their Canadian warehouse where they can deliver goods by truck anywhere in Canada or the contiguous United States in five to seven days.
As a child, Charles Gagnon spent a lot of time in the office. Over time, he started assembling valves and learning more about the business, and a dozen years ago, he began his career at Brukar working in the warehouse doing order fulfilment.
“It was great, and really taught me to be familiar with the products and part numbers, and familiarize myself with that end of the business,” he says. This soon led to travel opportunities, meeting suppliers in China, Taiwan, and India and getting to know them. Touring foundries and looking at parts and how they were made helped deepen his knowledge. He dedicated much of the last decade to account management and sales before Carolyn retired, taking over as President last March.
Unlike many other companies providing products for OEM clients, Brukar handles the entire supply chain, from freight to importing details and on-time delivery. Being family-owned makes Brukar agile and highly accountable. “When we see an opportunity to do something, we run our analysis and do it; we have no corporate red tape to work through,” says Gagnon. “This includes opening a European office in 2026. With it just being my mother and I—the two owners of the business—we can quickly say, ‘This is something we want to do, and this is what the cost will be; let’s do it.’” Larger companies need layers of approval from boards and shareholders before making a big move, which takes time and money.
In today’s fast-paced world, Brukar’s clients are looking to make their businesses easier, not more complex. Simplifying supply chains is one way the company takes stress away from its customers. “We bill ourselves as your one-stop shop for metal components,” says Gagnon of Brukar’s 40-plus years of industry experience.
Adding value
“There are various ways of making metal components,” says Gagnon. “You can machine them from a bar or stock. You can cast them by pouring molten metal into a mold. You can bend or stamp sheet metal. There are many manufacturing methods and materials to choose from.” Typically, a company will specialize in one manufacturing method, and often only one material; they may make aluminum die castings but won’t also do stainless steel investment castings. Then there are those who do stainless, but not iron, or castings, but not sheet metal fabrications. “We do it all. That’s why we have 75 suppliers, and each of them has its own specialties. And because we are that one-stop shop, we have in our warehouse dozens of materials made through a wide variety of manufacturing methods. So our customers can come to us for any metal components.”
For Brukar, the company’s soon-to-be-expanded warehouse is its biggest value-added service. Although the company doesn’t currently offer design services, Brukar’s engineering services group helps customers design parts to add value—to be more cost-effective, easier to manufacture, or lighter weight. Sometimes client engineers may not be familiar with new ways of designing metal casting, while Brukar’s engineers are experts in all fields.
“Everything is manufactured custom to our customers’ drawings,” Gagnon explains. “We don’t sell anything off the shelf. Our customers bring their designs, and we manufacture the components exactly to their specifications. Our customers own all designs and, in most cases, the tooling we produce to make their components.”
Brukar continues to enjoy growing demand from all sectors, and the company’s new Vice President of Sales hails from an agricultural-centred company, which will see Brukar diversify further still. Combined with its larger Canadian warehouse, expansion into India, and a new European office, Brukar is well-positioned to serve existing and new customers long into the future.
