ATS Corporation is a Canadian company based in

Cambridge, Ontario Cambridge is a city in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, located at the confluence of the Grand River (Ontario), Grand and Speed River, Speed rivers, in the central part of the Ontario Peninsula. The city had a population ...

, that designs and builds

factory A factory, manufacturing plant or production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. Th ...

automation Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, mainly by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machine ...

systems. It is listed on the

Toronto Stock Exchange The Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX; ) is a stock exchange located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the List of stock exchanges, 10th largest exchange in the world and the third largest in North America based on market capitalization. Based in th ...

History

ATS was founded by Klaus Woerner in 1978. Woerner, who immigrated to Canada from Germany in 1974, ran the company until his death in 2005, overseeing significant growth. In 2007, ATS pulled the planned IPO of its solar division, Photowatt. Partially as a result of this, two hedge funds, Goodwood and Mason Capital Management, led a proxy fight against the firm, leading to the a new board of directors and management team. Anthony Caputo became CEO at this time. Photowatt under-performed significantly in the years that followed; the company eventually sold Photowatt's French operations to EDF Group. In 2011, ATS purchased Sortimat Group, a German life sciences automation firm, for $62 million. In 2013, they purchased German packaging firm IWK for $144 million, and in 2014, they purchased the automation business of German company M+W Group for $362 million. In February 2017, Andrew Hider was appointed CEO of the company. In September 2023, ATS acquired Avidity Science, a biomedical research and life sciences water purification equipment provider, for $195 million.

Operations

ATS builds automation systems for the medical devices,

pharmaceuticals Medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal product, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy ( pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the ...

telecommunications Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communication technologies. These means of ...

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...

fiber optics An optical fiber, or optical fibre, is a flexible glass or plastic fiber that can transmit light from one end to the other. Such fibers find wide usage in fiber-optic communications, where they permit transmission over longer distances and at ...

, automotive,

computers A computer is a machine that can be programmed to automatically carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ('' computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as ''programs'', ...

solar energy Solar energy is the radiant energy from the Sun's sunlight, light and heat, which can be harnessed using a range of technologies such as solar electricity, solar thermal energy (including solar water heating) and solar architecture. It is a ...

and

consumer A consumer is a person or a group who intends to order, or use purchased goods, products, or services primarily for personal, social, family, household and similar needs, who is not directly related to entrepreneurial or business activities. ...

products industries. As of 2018, they have designed and built 23,000 automation systems. ATS employs approximately 6500 people worldwide, with 20 facilities in North America, Europe and Asia.

References

External links

* Companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange Manufacturing companies based in Ontario Manufacturing companies of Canada Companies based in Cambridge, Ontario Equipment semiconductor companies MES software {{Canada-company-stub