IMP Aerospace & Defence

IMP Aerospace & Defence is the defence arm of the privately held IMP Group, and it is organised as five operating businesses rather than one. IMP Aerospace, based at Halifax Stanfield International Airport with more than 500,000 square feet of hangar and shop space, is the fleet management and heavy maintenance business. Cascade Aerospace in Abbotsford, British Columbia, is the second aircraft business and holds prime responsibility for in-service support of the Royal Canadian Air Force Hercules fleet. IMP Electronic Systems builds wire harnesses, cable assemblies and avionics hardware and repairs electronics for aircraft, armoured vehicles and helicopters. IMP Aerostructures fabricates structural and mechanical components and assemblies. IMP Naval & Land Services extends the same engineering and sustainment model to ships and vehicles. The structure reflects how Canada buys sustainment, with long optimised weapon system management contracts handed to a single prime rather than split across suppliers.

Around 2,400 people work across sites in Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador and Ontario, and roughly ninety percent of the work is defence. Sites at Comox, Gander, Amherst, Greenwood, Hammonds Plains, Ottawa and Trenton put the company next to most of the bases it supports. The signature program is the CP-140 Aurora. IMP is the optimised weapon system management prime for the maritime patrol fleet, running both the Aurora Incremental Modernization Project and day to day in-service support, and it built a purpose-designed 90,000 square foot hangar for the Aurora and P-3 Orion re-winging work. Search and rescue is the other pillar. IMP has provided full fleet management and in-service support for the CH-149 Cormorant since the type entered Canadian service, and it is now assembling airframes in Halifax for the Cormorant Mid-Life Upgrade, converting the fleet from the AW101-511 to the 612 configuration alongside Leonardo, GE Canada, Collins Aerospace and CAE.

The rest of the portfolio is less visible and more varied. Missionization and modernization work covers piston to turbine conversions, cargo conversions, and reconfiguration of aircraft for reconnaissance, maritime patrol, search and rescue and aerial firefighting. IMP runs design approval organizations, so it can certify its own modifications rather than routing them through an OEM. It operates an ISO 17025 accredited calibration laboratory. Engineering services cover structures, systems, avionics, interiors, electrical design and flight analysis. IMP Academy, a free apprenticeship program, was launched to address the aircraft technician shortage that constrains the whole Canadian sustainment sector. The company describes its markets as air, land, sea and space, which is unusually broad for a firm of its size and reflects a deliberate strategy of selling depth of engineering rather than a product catalogue. IMP Group remains family controlled and headquartered in Halifax.