30 BCBUSINESS SEPTEMBER 2017
J
ust o the Island
Highway between
Courtenay and
Campbell River,
surrounded by •elds of graz-
ing horses and cattle, is the
home of Atlas Manufactur-
ing. The long, low building
where the company makes
its specialized drilling equip-
ment looks like a hobbyist's
machine shop.
"The reason we don't put
a sign out," says co-owner
and operations manager
David Freeman, "is that we
don't want people stopping
in and saying, 'Hey, can you
weld up my boat trailer?'
That's not what we do."
What nine-person Atlas
does is design and build
innovative products that
ship worldwide. Many of
its patented designs stem
from a speci•c kind of
inquiry—someone con-
tacts them for a piece
of equipment that
doesn't yet exist.
The Merville-based
business was born—and
now thrives—through inven-
tion. As a teenager, co-owner
and president Ken Anderson
worked on drilling rigs for a
water-well company owned
by his father, Vaughn.
After a couple of decades
driving pipe into the ground,
Anderson started designing
a new kind of casing ham-
mer. "I think I was lazy, so I
was trying to make the job
easier," he recalls.
His •rst casing hammer,
a hydraulic machine de-
signed for a cable tool drill,
boosted his production by
100 per cent and used far
less fuel than other models,
Anderson says. There were
already casing hammers for
rotary drills, but they ran on
air pressure, which is expen-
sive to generate, and
froze in cold climates.
After starting by sell-
ing to other water well
drilling companies,
Anderson promoted
his device at a groundwater
industry trade show in Las
Vegas. Sales took o.
The Andersons sold their
water-well drilling business
so they could focus on the
casing hammer, founding
Atlas Manufacturing in 1989.
They soon acquired a
patent on the mechanism
that runs the hammer. From
the beginning, well drilling
for single-family homes drove
their business. The company
now makes seven mod-
els, ranging in price from
US$20,000 to US$65,000;
the largest weighs about
3,200 kilograms.
When the 2008¢09
•nancial crisis and the
accompanying U.S. housing
crash killed the demand for
casing hammers, Anderson
turned to another tool: the
casing jack, which pulls pipe
out of the ground. It was used
to drill water wells, but more
demand came from the oil
and gas industry, for one-o
designs. "We didn't invent the
casing jack, but we developed
a custom market," Anderson
says. "You tell us what you
want, and we'll build it."
It proved an expedient
model—they introduced the
casing jack at trade shows,
and the commissions came
From the small Comox Valley community of
Merville, Atlas Manufacturing builds custom
drilling equipment used all over the world
Well Connected
LICENSED
TO DRILL
Ken Anderson with
David Freeman, co-
owner and manager
of operations at
Atlas Manufacturing
