BY JAMES CARELESS

SEA CANADA – INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT

SEA Canada, part of the UK-based SEA Group and Cohort plc Group, held a ribbon-cutting opening ceremony and reception at its new state-of-the-art factory in Ottawa on September 29, 2025. The new 15,000 square-foot facility, which has yet to be fully out tted, will manufacture SEA Canada’s Torpedo Launcher System (TLS) and the Ancilia trainable decoy launcher, among other activities. SEA Canada’s TLS is being incorporated in the Royal Canadian Navy’s River-class destroyers, which are being constructed by Irving Shipbuilding as part of Canada’s National Shipbuilding Strategy (NSS).

“Over the past 15 years, SEA Canada has been providing RNO and material procurement support to the Victoria inservice support contract, representing a number of overseas OEMs and ourselves,” SEA Canada’s General Manager Keith Cunnane told CDR. “About a year and a half ago, the decision was made to expand our operations in Canada to include production, repair and overhaul. Initially we’re going to build the torpedo launch systems for the River-class destroyers here in Ottawa. Then, as soon as we’ve got our production capability established, we’re going to start producing torpedo launch systems for export around the world — building systems that up until now have always been built in our facility in North Devon, UK.”

Given that SEA Canada’s TLS are installed on ocean-going ships, why is the company building them 1,000 kilometres away from the nearest ocean? “Ottawa has a very strong defence manufacturing and innovation ecosystem,” replied Cunnane. He noted that most defence companies who operate in the Canadian market “have some footprint” in Ottawa. There’s also two universities and a very good R&D innovation ecosystem here, along with “the government — our customer — the Royal Canadian Navy, and a really strong workforce that supports all of those activities,” said Cunnane. “So that’s one of the real draws for us: Ottawa is a place where we can establish our capability, we can build a workforce, we can build partnerships and collaboration, and have a real foundation for growth.”

CANADIAN PATROL SUBMARINE PROJECT

One potential area of growth being eyed by SEA Canada is the Canadian Patrol Submarine Project (CPSP). According to SEA Group Managing Director Richard Flitton, who flew over to Ottawa for the SEA Canada opening, “we’re actually the primary supplier of external communications on all UK submarines,” he told CDR. Based on this track record, “we’re hoping to play a role in the CPSP, whether that’s with some overseas yard doing some of the in-country work, or whatever. As well, we really do want SEA Canada to be a source of exports from Canada — targeting overseas programs, particularly in places like South America where relative time zones are easier to manage from here than they are in the UK.”

5% GDP GOAL

Given Ottawa’s commitment to meeting NATO’s 2% GDP spending target this year and its 5% GDP goal in the future, SEA Canada’s expansion is serendipitous. Keith Cunnane is certainly grateful for the federal government’s moves in this direction.

However, he noted that “the decision to expand our operations in Canada and base them in Ottawa predates those decisions. The Defence Policy Update was coming out just around the time that my boss there, Richard Flitton, made the decision to expand operations and base in Canada. So the way I characterize it is that it was a really good decision when it was made about 18 months ago. Subsequent events and announcements made it into a really, really good decision.” SEA Canada’s expansion is also good news for the economics of Canada and the UK, said British High Commissioner Robert Tinline prior to the ribbon-cutting. “We had Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Ottawa in June meeting with Mark Carney,” he said. “They issued a joint statement about what the UK and Canada want to do together over the coming months and years, and at the heart of that was growth. The opening of this facility neatly brings together all of those strands of what we’re trying to do in the UK and Canada.”

James Careless is CDR’s Ottawa Bureau Chief