Festo welcomes Groupe EP as a distributor for Quebec, Atlantic Canada
Mississauga, ON, September 2022 – Festo has announced a distributorship agreement for Quebec City-based Groupe EP to sell and support the company’s complete portfolio of pneumatic, electric and process automation products throughout Quebec and Atlantic Canada. This new partnership took effect on Sept 1.
“With its focus on growth, strong technical bias for automation, and a well-earned reputation for providing customers with value-added sales and support, Groupe EP is a particularly good representation of what Festo is looking for globally in a distributor,” says Chris Hemming, Channel Sales Manager for Festo Canada.
“By gaining access to our electric and process automation portfolios along with our pneumatics, Groupe EP has greater leverage to expand their business,” added Hemming. “Our customers, in turn, can rely on Groupe EP for top-notch support of our products as well as services such as vendor managed inventory programs, air preparation assembly and valve configuration assembly programs."
With five offices in Quebec, Groupe EP traces its history back a half century to the founding of Engrenage Provincial as a service provider for the province’s resource sector, says Sylvain Coulombe, the company’s Director of Pneumatic. Over the years, it has diversified into serving a wide range of industries and providing a comprehensive list of services, including design, installation and commissioning, repairs, upgrades and training.
“Groupe EP has long experience with pneumatics, which Festo is universally known for, and it’s also exciting to be able to expand our reach with their electric and process automation product families,” says Coulombe. “With multiple technologies at our disposal, we can offer the one that best suits each customer’s applications – and that opens up exciting new possibilities for us.”
Festo at a glance
Festo, the world’s leading supplier of automation technology and technical education, is deploying its products and services to meet the challenges of digitization and smart production. Founded in 1925, the family-owned company based in Esslingen, Germany supports a wide range of needs for advanced solutions in factory and process automation. In Canada, Festo has been supporting Canadian industry for almost 50 years, continuously elevating the state of manufacturing in this country with innovative products, optimized motion control solutions and unrivalled support. Globally, some 300,000 customers put their trust in the company’s pneumatic and electric drive products and technology. In addition, Festo Didactic provides state-of-the-art training equipment and educational programs for industrial companies and educational institutions – about 56,000 customers worldwide. The Festo Group registered sales of €3.65 billion in the 2023 financial year and is represented worldwide at 250 locations with about 20,600 employees. About 7.7% of its annual turnover is invested in research and development.
