A member of EMC and the Nova Scotia Consortium
Hawboldt Industries
Nova Scotia manufacturers are a diverse bunch and are known to quietly (and successfully) go about their business without drawing a lot of attention to themselves. This is the case for recent activity involving South Shore member Hawboldt Industries of Chester. Hawboldt Industries has been in business in Nova Scotia for over a century and has a reputation for manufacturing high quality, robust and innovative equipment to service the marine industry.
Their client base includes the defense industry, oil and gas, fishery and scientific sectors. The products they make are unique and interesting but it was the recent application of a winch they provided that had a large amount of the 'cool factor'.
The bulk of the equipment Hawboldt specializes in are winches and related support machinery. These can be small but accurate scientific winches up to massive support winches used to handle the umbilical cable needed to operate remote operated vehicles (ROV's) in the offshore oil industry. Once a winch is built Hawboldt typically loads the cable (up to 6 km of it) on the winch and they need to do this under tension to simulate the working conditions the winch will face. To do this, Hawboldt uses a piece of equipment called a Traction Winch which can apply a lot of resistance or pull on the cable it is handling.