When people hear "defence innovation," they rarely picture a washer. But for Ryder Britton, founder and head of growth at Velocity Bolting, that's exactly the point.
Velocity Bolting makes the Velocity Washer, a patented technology designed to eliminate galling — the seizing of bolts under heat and pressure — and enable up to 30 times faster disassembly. The product requires no changes to assembly or bolting procedures, which means customers can adopt it without disrupting existing operations.
The founder spent 14 years at a specialized bolting service business before starting Velocity Bolting, which means nothing the company has built was invented in a vacuum. Every solution addresses problems he watched play out in the field.
"Whether you're disassembling a joint at a downstream oil refinery or on board a navy vessel, the fasteners see similar environmental conditions and the same problems arise during maintenance," he says. That reality is what opened the door to defence without requiring a pivot.
Velocity Bolting secured purchase orders from the Coast Guard and US Navy before actively pursuing defence markets — a path that validated the technology's cross-sector relevance. Through the defence lens, Canada's Defence Industrial Strategy places emphasis on in-service support and maximizing uptime of critical vessels and assets. Reducing the length of docking work periods — the time a ship spends being serviced — matters enormously for an aging fleet still a decade away from replacement.
The company relocated from Ontario to Vancouver, a move the founder describes as driven by family and lifestyle, but one that also proved critical for ecosystem access. "I'm a genuine believer in Vancouver's future," he says, "though I think that future has to be built on more than real estate and services."
Japan has emerged as a significant growth opportunity. Velocity Bolting has been accepted into an upcoming Team Canada Trade Mission to Japan, and is actively engaging with Mitsubishi Corporation Canada — a partner in the Scale Up Program — to explore how its technology can support their global operations. "These physical engineering problems don't respect borders," the founder says. "Whether you're in Japan, Canada, or anywhere else in the world, the same issues exist."
On the program itself, the founder draws a clear distinction between his MBA from Ivey — where he was selected as valedictorian by his classmates — and what Scale Up offered. The MBA, he says, was designed to make you a generalist. "The Scale Up program let me zoom in on this specific venture and get precise about how to scale it, while avoiding the common pitfalls our mentors had already lived through. The targeting is what sets it apart."
Velocity Bolting is one of eight ventures in the pilot cohort of UBC Sauder's Scale Up Program, an initiative from the team behind CDL-Vancouver designed to help companies scale into defence, dual-use, and advanced industrial markets.
