About Us

History

Northern Transformer was founded in Concord, Ontario in 1981 to fill the growing demand in the Ontario market. The quality and robustness of our power transformers soon caught the attention of Canadian utilities.

The founding partners: Eric Bergenstien, Doug Hazelton and William Kemp, building on their combined experiences from Federal Pioneer and Ferranti Packard, understood that quality and longevity were paramount and Northern Transformer flourished from the early days based on strong customer satisfaction and retention.

In July 2012, the company was purchased by Giovanni Marcelli following a very successful entrepreneurial career as the founder of Accubid. Giovanni saw that Northern Transformer’s potential could be expanded by increasing the production capacity. Plans were formed for the construction of the new Maple manufacturing facility, 8 km from the original facility, with excellent logistics access and potential for continued expansion.

Current Operations

Northern Transformer’s new Maple Ontario manufacturing facility comprises of 125,000 sq. ft. factory space with another 15,000 sq. ft. of office space for engineering and customer support. Northern Transformer’s primary focus is the design and manufacture of liquid filled Power Transformers, Grounding Transformers and Specialty Transformers ranging from 5MVA to 200MVA with a maximum primary voltage of 240kV (1050 BIL).

Southern States

In December of 2018, Northern Transformer brought Southern States Investment Holding (SSIH) on board as a minority investor.  SSIH saw the potential in Northern’s growth and also a strategic partner in the mobile substation market.  Proceeds from the investment enabled expansion of the factory to grow from 160kV to 240kV and increase the size from 115MVA to 200MVA.

Acquisition of VRT North America

In May of 2020, Northern Transformer completed its acquisition of VRT Power Limited’s North American brand, products and technology. With more than 500 utility grade power transformers and mobile substations operating in North Amerca, VRT Power’s best in class technology for low noise, compact footprints, tailored solutions and high reliability is highly regarded by leading utility clients.

FedDev Ontario Funding

On July 12th 2018, FedDev Ontario announced a contribution of $3 million to help Northern Transformer innovate the way its power transformers are manufactured by adopting innovative clean technologies that will result in a reduced environmental footprint. FedDev Ontario’s contribution will allow Northern Transformer to retrofit its 105,000-square-foot facility in Vaughan with new, state-of-the-art equipment and to adopt first-in-Ontario ‘vapour phase drying’ technology in its manufacturing processes. Click on the link to find out more: http://bit.ly/2Gde8C7.