For 30 years, Inkas built armoured vehicles and safes for export markets abroad, largely bypassing its own government as a customer. 

That's changing, according to Andy Ellis, executive vice-president of security and government relations at the Toronto-based manufacturer, who says Ottawa is finally becoming a buyer of Canadian-made defence hardware.

Inkas was founded in 1995, when a husband-and-wife team started the company to move cash securely, according to Ellis. The pair armoured a vehicle to transport charitable proceeds, then built a safe from the same steel when they realized the cash still needed secure storage before reaching a bank.

That safe business grew into what Ellis described as North America's largest, alongside a parallel armoured vehicle line that expanded from cash-in-transit work into civilian vehicles, diplomatic transport and law enforcement and tactical vehicles built for SWAT-style use. Ellis said he rode in Inkas diplomatic vehicles abroad during his own career in government.

The company's move into defence platforms over the past year, he said, is a natural extension of that trajectory rather than a departure.

"I've never had a hardware permit before, and neither have most defence companies," Ellis said, describing conversations with peer manufacturers at a recent industry gathering in Calgary. Most, he said, had the same story: strong sales in the United States and abroad, but almost none in Canada.

That absence has deep roots. Canada has historically bought armoured and tactical vehicles from American suppliers, leaving domestic manufacturers to build almost exclusively for export. Ellis said that pattern is now shifting as federal departments move to buy Canadian-built equipment for Canadian use, a priority that aligns with Ottawa's broader Defence Industrial Strategy push to maximize domestic content and sustainment.

Inkas launched three new defence platforms over the past year: the M1, a Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected troop carrier; a light tactical vehicle built for special forces use; and Anuri, a counter-uncrewed aerial vehicle system still in final testing. Ellis said the light tactical vehicle was designed with Canadian special operations forces in mind, including Joint Task Force 2, and that the company is developing variants suited to both Arctic and desert conditions.

He pointed to the toll drones have taken on far more expensive armoured platforms in Ukraine as the rationale behind the counter-UAV push. According to Ellis, roughly 80 to 85 Abrams tanks donated to Ukraine during the Biden administration have since been destroyed by inexpensive drones. 

"You can't operate on the modern battlefield unless you have counter-UAV capability," he said.

Ellis credited Global Affairs Canada's Trade Commissioner Service and the Department of National Defence with accelerating the shift, saying both have pushed harder than in past administrations to connect Canadian manufacturers with domestic buyers. He said the next challenge is structural: getting primes, subprimes and smaller suppliers to formally collaborate rather than compete in isolation.

"There's an expectation on the private sector, but also on the public sector, to work together to create consortiums," Ellis said. 

He described sharing production floor space with a larger prime as one early example, and said smaller firms need a clearer path into that ecosystem.

Inkas has expanded its Toronto operations by roughly a third over the past two years, according to Ellis, and is hiring engineers, welders and other automotive workers in Oshawa and Windsor, including veterans. The company produces 300 to 400 vehicles annually and expects to roughly double that with new Canadian capacity, he said, alongside a comparable buildout underway at a newly acquired facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, aimed at the U.S. market.

Inkas has never taken outside investment, Ellis said, but is now considering it to help fund inventory, calling that build-out expensive and risky given how quickly requirements can shift. He said government support agencies such as the Canadian Commercial Corporation and Export Development Canada have a growing role to play in reducing payment and reputational risk as Canadian firms pursue new markets, including in the developing world.

For Ellis, the shift toward shared production and cross-company collaboration marks the real change in the sector, more than any single vehicle or platform. 

"I'm going to put my intellectual property on the table if you do yours," he said of the trust required to build the kind of manufacturing consortiums Ottawa is now pushing for. "It's never been done before, and it's time, and it's happening."