Regina-based Indigenous company goes global

Flowing River Capital Partners, an Indigenous-owned and led investment firm based out of Regina, has announced the acquisition of defence company Marshall Land Systems.

The sale, completed on November 21, transfers ownership from the company previously based in Cambridge, England to the Regina based firm. The acquisition makes Flowing River the largest Indigenous-owned defence company in Canada.

“This is a massive win for Canadian business for now having defence ownership and capacity coming back to Canada,” said Thomas Benjoe, CEO of Flowing River Capital Partners. “But it’s an even more massive win on the Indigenous side, as we are now the largest Indigenous owned defence business in the country.”

Marshall Land Systems designs, manufactures, and integrates advanced defence structures and deployable infrastructure and vehicle systems for military and commercial clients. Their products include shelters with ballistic protection, land vehicles, and custom built containers for storing and transporting sensitive items like ammunition and explosives.

It’s the fifth acquisition as a company, which positions them in a space with little competition, said Benjoe.

“There isn’t a lot of Indigenous business in this space,” he explained.  “There are a lot of organizations like Cando and Canadian Council for Indigenous Business that are looking to support Indigenous entrepreneurs and development corps get into that space. Our investment thesis as an organization is that instead of trying to build capacity over time, our job is to acquire capacity.”

Marshall Land Systems operates out of three locations that includes an 82,000 square foot manufacturing facility in Moncton, New Brunswick; a main headquarters in Cambridge; and an additional facility in the Netherlands.

Benjoe said they will maintain all three locations, as they have contracts with NATO countries and must maintain a footprint in the United Kingdom and Netherlands to meet the demands of those contracts.

He said there will be job opportunities in the New Brunswick manufacturing facility. In Saskatchewan, he said he hopes this prompts more Indigenous people to explore opportunities in the sector.

“We need to be able to find more Indigenous engineers that we can bring into our processes because we have the capability to design – we own the IT for a lot of our technology – so having that capacity and those engineers who are interested in building new capabilities,” he said.

Benjoe sees a lot of potential in this sector for those already in this field and for those thinking about their future.

“I hope that this becomes another career opportunity that young First Nations people in Saskatchewan can think about.”

In Canada, only about 10 per cent of the spending in the defence sector is spent with Canadian-owned businesses, with the majority spent on American or international defence companies. In the newly passed federal budget, Canada committed to spending $88 billion in Canadian defence.

“There has been significant talk about trying to develop more Canadian capacity (in defence),” said Benjoe. “I think demonstrating the Canadian ownership we have, alongside the Indigenous ownership, is only going to increase opportunities significantly for us on a go-forward basis.”