Written by Kieran Delamont, Associate Editor, London Inc.

Hitachi Energy announces $479-million plant in London

Hitachi Energy says it will spend $479 million on building a transformer insulation factory in London’s Huron Industrial Park (rendering pictured), home to what it says will be Canada's first pressboard manufacturing line. When complete, the plant will produce a dense, paper-like board made from wood pulp that’s used to insulate the inside of electrical transformers. The 226,000-square-foot factory is expected to be finished by 2028 and create “over 100 permanent skilled jobs,” the company said in a press release on Friday. Hitachi’s new factory will produce up to 20,000 tonnes of pressboard insulation material a year, which the province says will make it the largest plant of its kind in the world. Upper levels of government are chipping significant dollars into the project, with $20 million coming from Ottawa’s Strategic Response Fund, a contribution of up to $20 million from the Invest Ontario Fund and another $10 million from Natural Resources Canada. “By establishing Canada’s first pressboard manufacturing line here in London, we are bringing a critical capability closer to home, strengthening domestic supply chains and supporting the infrastructure needed to meet growing electricity demand,” said Carla Vicente, managing director of Hitachi Energy Canada. Federal energy minister Tim Hodgson added, “this project demonstrates how we can create high value uses for Canadian forest products like pulp in the energy infrastructure that powers our economy.”

The upshot: Hitachi bought Canduct Group, a London manufacturer of transformer insulation kits, back in June, and at the time the company had signalled it was planning on building this facility. Friday’s announcement closes the loop on that, with the announcement of a plant to build the insulation material that will get turned into transformer insulation kits at the existing Canduct Group facility. Hitachi is investing significantly in its North American supply chain through 2027, with a couple other significant capital projects already announced in the United States, as it looks to corner a chunk of the global market on transformers and other aspects of electrical grid infrastructure. It’s at least somewhat notable that, with all the tariff stuff going on, Hitachi chose to locate this pressboard plant in Canada, but either way, federal officials are declaring it another win in their push to draw in investment dollars towards national infrastructure projects and supply chains, and another buyer for Canadian forestry products that are being hit hard by the cross-border tariffs. “Canada is strengthening its electricity system to build a more connected, reliable, and efficient grid,” said federal industry minister Mélanie Joly. “By investing in the critical infrastructure needed to power our future, we are supporting economic growth, creating good-paying jobs, and strengthening Canada’s economic security.”

Read more: Hitachi Energy | Government of Ontario

Pharmaline to build 90,000-square-foot production facility in Innovation Park

Mississauga-based pharma company Pharmaline is building a 70-job manufacturing plant in London’s Innovation Park, after city council approved the sale of the land to the company this week. Pharmaline is a contract manufacturer in the pharmaceutical industry, meaning it makes pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals (vitamins, supplements and the like) for other health and wellness brands. The London plant, the company’s first outside the Toronto area, will be a 90,000-square-foot facility on five acres at Innovation Park, and is expected to produce around 300 different products, including various tablets, capsules, gummies and softgels. “We chose London not only for its strategic location and skilled workforce, but also for the city’s forward-thinking approach to industrial development,” said founder and CEO Suresh Kolla. “Our investment in London represents an important milestone in our vision to strengthen Canada’s advanced manufacturing capabilities and build a more self-reliant health and wellness industry.” The London Economic Development Corporation’s Kapil Lakhotia praised the announcement, saying that pharmaceutical manufacturing was an “important area of diversification,” and that pursuing manufacturing employers outside of tariff-sensitive sectors is “another way to diversify the economy.”

The upshot: Pharmaline will join a small but growing(ish) cluster of pharmaceutical or nutraceutical manufacturing (or other medical-adjacent) companies operating in London, including ANVO Labs, Medicom (which is set to start producing nitrile gloves by next year), Trudell Medical and Jones Healthcare. Pharmaline is more of a supplements manufacturing company than a pharmaceutical producer, and city officials are certainly celebrating the announcement as a vote of confidence in the city overall. “A new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility represents an important vote of confidence in London’s workforce, our industrial lands strategy and the strength of our life sciences and advanced manufacturing sectors,” said Mayor Josh Morgan in a press release. “Creating up to 70 jobs and bringing the manufacturing of more health and wellness products home to Canada represents an investment that is good news for our local economy and our country.” 

Read more: London Free Press | CBC News London

Info-Tech becomes Infotech, completes its first acquisition

London-based Info-Tech Research Group has bought SaaS company Zluri (price undisclosed), the first acquisition in the company’s nearly 30-year history, the firm announced this week. It also has a new name: the business will now go by just ‘Infotech’. Zluri, founded in 2020, makes backend enterprise tools that help businesses keep track of the cloud software they pay for and who has access to it. Those tools, Infotech says, will become part of CIO Analytics, a new platform that Infotech is launching globally alongside the deal. “AI and analytics are nothing without the right data, and the right data is hard to act on without benchmarks and industry-leading insight that show what ‘good’ looks like. This is especially true for IT,” said CEO Tom Zehren. The company says it has more than quadrupled in size over the past seven years and now bills more than US$300 million annually. Founder and chairman Joel McLean was a bit more pointed. “As organizations enter and compete in the AI era, IT leaders need advice the legacy advisory firms simply are not willing or able to provide,” he said.

The upshot: The timing for this kind of growth — a first-ever acquisition for a company that had otherwise already been growing steadily — is notable. Companies like Infotech in the research-and-advisory space are under real and persistent pressure from the development of more sophisticated AI models and AI infrastructure. Legacy competitors to Infotech, like the research firm Gartner (the industry’s largest research firm, and one that works in many of the same areas), has seen its growth stall and share prices tumble under that pressure. “The launch of API-driven advisory through CIO Analytics, alongside the acquisition of Zluri, reflects where we believe the market is going,” McLean said. “We’re combining operational data, AI and human expertise to inform the decisions IT leaders need to make now.” Zluri’s CEO Ritish Reddy framed it similarly, saying “the next era of IT won’t be won by software or by legacy advisory alone. It will be won by bringing them together.”

Read more: Infotech | TechTarget

Canadian-born entertainment company Activate set to open London location

Activate Games Inc., a Winnipeg-based chain of active gaming venues, announced this week it will soon open an Activate location in London, at the site of the old Adventures on Wonderland location on Wonderland Road South. The facility is a bit like Adventures on Wonderland, for that matter, just geared more toward a more mature crowd — groups move through a series of rooms dodging lasers, solving puzzles and racing the clock, somewhat like a video game. The London site will be 10,840 square feet, with 11 game rooms and more than 800 challenges, according to a press release from the company, which pitches Activate as a place for “friends, families, birthdays, corporate events and team outings.” Activate itself is a made-in-Canada success story too, with the firm producing all its games and gear in Winnipeg. Earlier this year, the company landed on the Financial Times’ list of the Fastest Growing Companies in the Americas, placing number one in the Leisure and Entertainment category and number 11 overall across all industries in North and South America. “Every Activate location becomes part of its local community, and we’re excited for London to be next,” said co-founder and CEO Adam Schmidt. Activate now runs more than 80 locations across North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. The company said they expect the London location to open later this month.

The upshot: A Retail Insider article points out that commercial landlords are increasingly looking for entertainment options like Activate to fill mid-sized vacant units, of which the old Adventures on Wonderland (which closed earlier this year) is a good example. We’ve seen this trend pop up elsewhere in the city as well, if you recall the splashy announcement of Footlab’s AI soccer lab opening at White Oaks. “Visits to the entertainment concepts tracked by JLL reached approximately 217 million in 2025, up 12 per cent from 2019,” reported Retail Insider, adding that “the average visit lasts roughly 140 minutes, a length of stay that helps explain why landlords are paying closer attention to the category.” Activate is smaller by comparison than some of the other entertainment spaces that have opened or are set to open in London — at just under 11,000 square feet, it’s less than a third of the size of Footlab (37,000 square feet) and The Rec Room at Masonville Place (35,000 square feet) and far smaller than the 170,000 square feet that make up The Factory at 100 Kellogg Lane.  

Read more: Activate | Retail Insider

Province clears the path for new south-end industrial park

The province has cleared the way for a private industrial park on farmland in London’s south end, outside the city’s urban growth boundary. Housing Minister Rob Flack signed a minister’s zoning order last month for 23 hectares at Highbury Avenue South and Green Valley Road, where Dancor Construction intends to build eight industrial buildings (rendering pictured). The order lets the project skip the usual local planning process. City council asked the province for the order in March 2025, citing the site’s proximity to the PowerCo battery plant (even though city staff argued London already had enough industrial land). “We really need to develop the (Highway) 401 and Highbury corridor going toward St. Thomas, and this is the first stage,” Ward 14 Councillor Steven Hillier said at the time. Dancor CEO Sean Ford told The London Free Press that PowerCo’s two-year delay doesn’t worry him, and that he already has interest in two of the buildings set to be built on the site, which are, according to Dancor’s planning report, pitched mainly at logistics and warehousing for larger industrial sites, including the Volkswagen-backed PowerCo project. “We have seen growth in manufacturing but the defence sector is expanding, warehousing is needed,” he said. “Everyone who needs something needs a place to put it.” Ford said he hopes to begin construction in the spring.

The upshot: While the fast-tracking got some minor pushback from Councillor Sam Trosow, who argued back in 2025 against requesting the zoning order saying that the city has plenty of available industrial land within the urban growth boundary, city staff have said that the city will eventually need more industrial land outside of it. “It’s going to be a little while before we get to review the urban growth boundary in that area, so this is one way of moving that forward,” Hillier said at the time. The move is also drawing some criticism from those interested in protecting farmland, such as Martin Straathof, executive director of Ontario Farmland Trust, who told the Free Press, “substantial loss of farmland is taking place and Southwestern Ontario and London is one of the fastest growing areas in Ontario,” adding that “these one-off situations are becoming more common. It’s death by a thousand cuts, a few acres here and there.” Dancor has said that there could be up to 1,300 jobs supported by the site, though that will ultimately depend on the tenant mix, as 1,300 jobs for a site that is primarily logistics and warehousing is likely a high-end estimate.

Read more: London Free Press

Deep Breathe gets $1 million in federal AI funding

London’s Deep Breathe, which makes AI software for diagnostic ultrasounds, is getting $1 million from the federal government’s Regional Artificial Intelligence Initiative. The announcement this week was largely a photo-op for politicians and the company — the money had already been committed to the company last year. “Do I have a life-threatening condition, do I have a cough or do I have pneumonia? These kinds of questions come up every day for people,” CEO Dr. Rob Arntfield (pictured) told CTV News London. The technology is still an advanced prototype, and Arntfield said the money will go toward achieving Health Canada approval and hiring additional staff. London MPs Arielle Kayabaga and Peter Fragiskatos got to try it out at Tuesday’s announcement. “Think of men and women of the armed forces serving on the frontlines. If they’re injured, is it a collapsed lung, or is it something else? This technology can help,” said Fragiskatos.

The upshot: What’s interesting is the way Dr. Arntfield is shifting the messaging around Deep Breathe’s technology, which has previously often been talked about as a military tool for battlefield medicine. Now — possibly knowing his audience (federal officials) and their desire to be able to point to innovations as tangible benefits of their AI investments — he’s talking a bit differently, pitching it as something that would have a wider target market than army medics or ultrasound professionals, calling it “something user-friendly that an almost novice can use, whether you’re someone in the military, somebody in an ambulance, somebody in a hospital,” he said. “As the prime minister has made crystal clear, if artificial intelligence is to truly succeed, it is going to have to benefit the vast majority of Canadians,” Fragiskatos told CBC News London. Arntfield hinted at an even bigger ambition for this kind of tech, too. “The idea of the, sort of, true superhuman diagnostics is on our roadmap, but I don’t know if we know the world’s ready for that yet,” he said. “We know we're capable of it, and the technology is capable of it.”

Read more: CTV News London | CBC News London

Dispatch: October 16, 2026

A summary of recent business appointments and announcements, plus event listings for the upcoming week.

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