Metal valve manufacturing

A residual group: metal valves, ball and roller bearings, and a miscellany code (332999) that holds everything from safes to metal ladders. Bearings are a global scale industry and the miscellany has no common economics; neither was examined. The one niche with a recognisable Canadian path is industrial valves, where Montreal's Velan has long sold into refineries, power stations and navies. That history is the attraction — engineered product, approved-vendor status, a long-lived installed base — and Velan's accounts are the cut. In fiscal 2026 it reported sales of US$296.4M, up 0.4%, a 27.4% gross margin, and operating income of US$1.6M [A]: about half a percent of sales, from a company that already holds every approval an entrant would spend a decade earning. Bookings rose 0.9%. The backlog of US$283.3M is almost a full year of sales, which describes the business model: large project orders, won by tender, built over many months and financed by the maker until delivery. In the same year Velan paid US$143.0M to settle U.S. asbestos claims and sold its French subsidiaries for US$208.2M to fund it — a reminder that an industrial product's liabilities can outlive its margins by decades [A]. A new valve maker would be qualifying for approved-manufacturer lists in order to join a flat, tender-priced market in which the established Canadian name barely breaks even. Software for metal shops is screened separately.